Oh yeah, now this is a unique one, ain’t it. Every once in a while I enjoy building kits of supposed “great” cars, which ended up being failures or legendary for their unreliability, or in this case of the wonderful front wheel drive Chrysler K and L-platform era; “dull“. MPC made a fair few of these little kits in the early eighties, which included the L-platform Dodge Charger, the Dodge Omni/024(the predecessor) and the eventual Shelby Charger GLHS(Goes Like Hell S’more) that Carroll Shelby took a interest to and actually turned into formidable race and drag cars.
All the way through the eighties, MPC made variations of the Omni and Charger kits, some custom, some factory stock but with the Shelby options. All in all, these kits were from a much stronger era for MPC, where the kits were packed with parts that would go together somewhat alright instead of what we can now only describe as “like AMT, but worse“. I’ve slammed MPC time and time again for producing lazy molds and kits that are a struggle to build, if not in some cases just not fun, but I really can’t ever fault them for variety. And with the Omni/Charger kits, they infact aced it on both variety as well as quality.
This, though, is not a Shelby Charger. This is a ’81 Omni. There’s no mincing words about the quality of the car, especially this one which came with the legendarily slow 1.7L Volkwagen inline four(the ’81 onwards 2.2L I4 from Chrysler improved the ride and speeds significantly), but it was a direct answer to the second fuel crisis in 1979 when yet again the signs came out and burbling V6’s and V8’s roared around on gas station lots waiting in line. Along with the Dodge Omni Miser, Dodge Aries and Dodge Colt, the Omni 024 was meant to be European under the hood but American on the road. Fitting pretty much the entire idea of Detroit’s mentality at the time of “just buy an American car, it’ll be as good as a European or Asian car“.
Granted, it was nothing like that. The car rusted terribly, the brakes were terrible but lo and behold, despite the heap of flaws, for the money you spend you did get a decent car and the I4 engine(whether 1.7 or 2.2) actually did what it was meant to. It saved you a ton of fuel, got you around and if you had luck, the car didn’t rust away on your driveway and could one day be your kids ride, it has flaws but it could always be fixed. MPC meanwhile kicked off 1980 and 1981 with two kits based on the Omni 024 – and both attempted to “cool” the cars up significantly, cause this was in the era that Detroit was very upset with itself, OPEC and Japan(holy shit were they pissed off at Japan, public destruction of Japanese cars, Japanese people being shunned, attacked and in extreme cases even killed, they weren’t great times).
Forgive me for the history lesson, but with these little cars and the respective kits, this day and age, it helps to get some of the context on how these things came to be and how they’re actually really unique, if not a reminder of a dark time in automotive history.
Anyhow, little gritty racers is what the 024 and TC3 were meant to represent and MPC tried to do so with this kit, giving it the “Silver Bullet” treatment and the other kit was given what I can only describe as some absolutely ridiculous Pike’s Peak like front bumper scoop and giant wing. And like I said, Detroit wasn’t having it and to some extend, neither was the public – The car sold… poorly. Not awfully, just nowhere near the hopes. In the same year, the “Omni” name was taken off and given its own lineage and the car was now just the Dodge 024, which was about as catchy as a fart, but y’know, desperate times.
This kit too had some extras, wire-wheels, louvers for the side windows(but not rear, weirdly enough even though the ‘other’ Omni 024 kit from MPC does have them) and all sorts of extra bits to make the car stand out more sporty. It’ll start to remind you of a slightly ‘Americanized’ Volkswagen Scirocco and honestly, nothing wrong with that sentiment. It comes with all the parts to make it a bog standard, simplistic Dodge Omni hatchback or turning it into the sportier slightly more custom 024. It even has some weird relic pieces where the tires of the car are both available in normal rubber, or casted plastic. But I digress, the quality is top notch.
There’s something odd about the eighties when suddenly kit production hit a new height in quality and detail from all the large companies, but AMT(once it became AMT Ertl) and MPC saw the biggest leaps. From somewhat low quality but still very detailed kits to high quality casts with good builds and loads of detail all around. The tiny, puny and now even downright forgettable engine has well over 15 pieces dedicated to it and even then there’s more to customize with, like chrome headers, turbo intake(on this I4 though? What?) and more.
To an extend I did wanna show the kit some extra love cause it’s actually a really, really decent kit coming from the MPC guys so I for instance gave it a set of nicer wheels. A set of Foresight Ventures Indy 500 mags from Forward Resin, a reputable resin caster from the States that sells wheels for damn near nothing. Applied a coat of a Mercedes color, smoke silver with a few clear coats over it. Originally intended to go with red but then though, nah, this is sportier and prettier to a degree. Fashioned a spoiler out of the front air-dam cause the actual tail wing is… shoddily cast and hardly fits(it’s a typical MPC product, it’s meant to “sleeve” over the tail end but just gives two giant ugly edges you can see under) and just kind of shoved it together from there on.
To be fair, it is a very simple build, it has three pieces for the rear axle, around five on the front and it’s all a little clunky when it comes to attaching the wheels and the engine rests on the trans-axle in a way I can only describe as resting a pallet of bricks on a twig. But despite that, it does all kind of go together well. Especially for a MPC build. Especially. There’s even some room for improvement; the headlight slots are completely open and you can easily replicate some square headlights with some translucent plastic sheeting, black paint, and some chrome backings fashioned from a chrome sprue. I don’t have any plastic sheets so I just rolled with it, but it’s possible so that’s nice! Finally non-chrome headlamps if you want it! Though it takes some effort on our end, but at least it is a possibility.
On top of that, I used some decals from the ’68 Dart and ’69 Charger Daytona kits to give it a sliiiightly improved look that isn’t downright dull, in reality the cars have O24/024 decals behind the front door and on the tail gate but of course MPC didn’t add any of those when they created that uh, “Silver Bullet” design. No license plates either, so, figured a couple of classic “Dodge” logos on the side and the red logo plate on the back would make it look somewhat more finished.
The only two issues with the kit, the ones that stand out at least is the fact that the chassis and the body have severe issues meeting and this was meant to play out with the fender flares that I didn’t add, so it looks… a bit off with a bit of the chassis sticking out underneath. The second is that the hood floats on the body and just doesn’t fit, it doesn’t help that of course a thirty six year old kit has warped somewhat so the hood now doesn’t even meet the front.
It’s a weird little time-piece. With the ’80 Citation X-11 I left it as stock as could be given that the box came with all the pieces and decals to make it so but on the Omni 024 it was hardly possible, it didn’t have the rear louvers to make it a 2.2 or even a DeTomaso(kid you not, Alejandro de Tomaso’s company did a styling package for this thing, the wheels are on the sprues even!) so it’s hard to make it into any of the more uh… “performance orientated” Omnis, Jesus Christ did I just type that about a freaking inline four rust bucket? Yup, I did. Anyhow, it’s to an extend a far nicer build than its distant cousin the Dodge Aspen/Plymouth Volare and comes out looking twice as nice even though they’re in reality only two years apart in terms of tooling.
’81 Dodge Omni 024 specifications:
Kit: M1-0710
Skill Level: N/A
Parts: 96
Molded in: Silver
Scale: 1/25
The quadfecta’s complete. Or at least, for the time being until I manage to shrink down the ’11 40th Anniversary decals I’m cooking up in Photoshop lately. But what we got here is arguably the first proper anniversary edition Camaro. Back in ’97, car manufacturers were quite desperately clinging onto brand names and former glory cause give or take ten years before they more or less placed the gun barrel against the muscle car and gently pulled the trigger.
Now the fourth generation wasn’t particularly popular, I mean the cars still sold and they were actually quite reliable and decent on the speed department too, but a lot of people argue its the ugliest generation of the Camaro legacy, with elongated Neo Storm/Ford Probe like looks(inspired by the Pontiac Banshee concept, which is both a pro and a con at once) but before it got its facelift, 
And serious points to AMT Ertl for nailing those details in this kit, honestly! The 1990s were great for AMT for as long as they used their own tooling and not MPC’s, you get kits like the 
So I scrapped the entire rear and front suspension to make room for the wheels cause they otherwise stick out a good fifth of a inch, which is… just not right. I used some tooth picks and epoxy(did a similar thing on the 
Ahh MPC, how rocky a relationship we have. I talked about how MPC’s model kits have this odd, cheap and unfinished feeling to ’em and how it damn near ruined the hobby for me in the 
For instance, is it so damn hard to mold some clear headlights instead of making ’em all chrome pieces? Revell, Monogram and AMT have been doing it since the seventies, what the absolute hell is keeping MPC from doing it? Oh right, simplicity and short-cuts.
I kept the red paint job the box showed for the 2-in-1 option, the car was available in several colors and honestly the black suits it but I figured I’d go with a more subdued red. To make it a little nicer, I used some leftover Road Runner decals from the 1974 kit which I honestly prefer over the giant eighties ones and kept the T-tops “painted” on, the kit does offer separate T-tops and cutting the ones out of the body is very easy but just doesn’t look pretty when they’re out, the removable tops are just as solid as they were in the first place and it just looks janky and it really still shows that its a D.I.Y. job.
Monogram haven’t made many Buick kits, only a couple of ’em across the board. I wrote something on the 
And boy this kit shows that just like the car itself, it was peak turbocharger hype, V6 engines that produced equal power to big block V8s and the end of the muscle car era all at the same time. The Regal was one of the few late eighties cars that could preform all the while being a good car and the engine itself was nothing short of a masterpiece(its direct competitors were the Cutlass, Grand Prix, Thunderbird and Monte Carlo and… that was about it). Well, okay, it was also falling back onto old habits cause man, it sure as hell wasn’t fuel efficient. But Buick did try to innovate, there’s no faulting them there. They took the Buick 231 V6 from ’78 and took it on a tour of duty through the eighties, slapping a gargantuan turbocharger onto it and giving it the appropriate name “Turbo Regal”.
Though unlike the real car, this kit does have a few woes that linger. Despite the fact that this kit is one of those late eighties new tools from Monogram that trumped all expectations with crisp as all hell molding, beyond high quality engine bay and engine itself and a good eye for quality on the body, there are moments where it goes together like shoving a round peg in a square hole. For instance, while the superb detail is there, the side marker lights for the headlights are a God damn nightmare to get in place. They hardly fit and when they do, they “float” on nothing but the backing.
Revell, just like AMT Ertl and MPC, has a bit of a history of making some really interesting models that were relics of a era where the US vehicle industry was on the verge of bankruptcy and throwing out vehicles left, right and center to attempt to re-capture the US domestic market all the while laying off so many people that it broke records. Chrysler had the K body cars, GM had the “brilliant” all-new X-body Chevrolet Citation.
The downfall of the Citation was swift, within five years the car’s sales had dropped nearly 90% as recalls for faulty brakes, radiator hoses leaking that could lead to fires, rust issues, interior bits just popping off randomly and general lack of quality tore apart what actually was a functional little car that could’ve saved GM a giant amount of financial woes. The saying “too little, too late” stuck ’em hard though, as the Citation was the proverbial drop that filled the bucket past its rim: after the Chevrolet Vega was well underway of becoming GM’s last ‘blunder’, the Citation quickly proved that it could get worse.
Though luckily, a theme of the lowrider kit series is that it’s always a 2-in-1 kit with plenty of options and thanks to that, this is the best version of this kit you can possibly get. It has the options for the X-11, the 2.8L V6 and the lowrider version, with Goodyear Polysteel Radial decals, two sets of X-11 decals and a whole stripe set for the custom 2.8L Turbo version. And to get it outta the way quickly; the lowrider version is hilariously ugly. The decals for it are low-res, the woman for the hood decal is vague at best(I think its a topless blonde? Honestly cannot tell) and it has the same ugly-as-sin outwards wheels that are on every lowrider kit from Revell during this time. (The ’92 Thunderbird, ’92 Mustang, ’84 Coupe Deville, so on, all have the same whitewall tires and wire rims and such, which are awesome quality and seriously well cast but just… ugly).
It all goes together really well, too. Which is hardly surprising from a Monogram kit, they always had the tendency to go together supremely well, the only downside was that they were also super basic thanks to said simplicity, though that really isn’t the case here. Hell, even the instructions are crystal clear with reference pictures to get some of the more complicated set-ups done right from several angles.
Chrysler Corp sure knew how to pick names for their cars over the years… Granted, many of ’em were catchy because Ford Motor Company came up with really “manly”, if not animalistic sounding names for their cars like Mustang, Thunderbird, Cougar, so on. Chrysler on the other hand? Charger, Challenger, Barracuda, Demon, Ram and such… And among them was the “Ramcharger”. The direct Dodge competitor to the Chevy Blazer and Ford Bronco, though those were around since ’66 and ’69 respectively(which were responses to the International Harvester Scout I).
It has kept some legacy pieces from its two iterations since 1981, for instance the ’81 release had a giant light bar on the roof, while the lightbar’s gone, the headlamps for it still are on the glass sprue. In ’91 it was re-released as the “Gone Fishing” set with a giant motorboat on a trailer, though this version was actually the first Ramcharger that looked somewhat like a factory stock vehicle. The only changes besides that were more decals and a new set of wheels and tires to reflect it becoming somewhat more grounded in reality. And now cue 2016, suddenly Revell re-releases it under the “Trucks” line, kind of out of the blue.
But like I said earlier, it is also a quintessential Monogram release. Pretty awesomely detailed on the body, great engine, pretty alright interior and meh engine bay. But there’s some things I kind of wished they had bothered with. Like for instance, clear tail lights would’ve made a huge difference and some more detail on the 400 cubic inch V8 engine would also have brought out the engine detail some more. I should actually take back the “meh engine bay” comment for this model as actually this one has some significant engine bay detail but less on the actual engine. I didn’t bother wiring up the engine cause I just found it a tad bit too simple looking to go through the effort on but meh, that could also just mean I’m a lazy ass.
By the late sixties, the definitive muscle car was the Mustang. It invented the term “pony car”; long hood, big engine, short rear and low price. And by 1968 every single large car manufacturer had a variety of the pony car. GM by then had the Firebird, Camaro and Barracuda, Ford re-invented it by going deeper with the Mustang(fastback and coupe) and let Mercury in on the fun with the Cougar and AMC came with the Javelin. Late entries to the fun were Chrysler with the Challenger and the updated ‘Cuda in 1970.
And kit manufacturers have been really generous with the original muscle car. Every single generation’s had every single edition covered, some better than others. Monogram brought out the 1970 Mustang kit way back in 1981 and has since been improving upon it. It’s been re-released around twelve times since, every time in a different jacket; some were the Boss 302, some were the Boss 429, some were both, hell some even came as the famous Mach 1 and in 2007 Revell released them in the same box under their excellent “Special Edition” line. Which comes down to the mold being a lot more crisp and more detailed, a much much better decal sheet and of course having all the bits to go fully one way or the other.
The legendary 5.0L engine that Ford Mustangs are still asciociated with to this day, the 302, is replicated fantastically. Down to the little Ford emblems on the rocker covers, the little breathers on them, so on. The decals help, a lot. But it helps that Revell put effort into making it crisp, just like the Charger engine molds, these will look good for a long, long time to come, though sadly its 1/24th scale likely means the engine won’t see a lot of use cross-kits from here on out. But still, it’s a fantastically molded engine block. The “custom” bits, like the so called “Cross Boss” intake manifold(fantastic Trans-Am goodie made by Autolite back in 1969, rarely if ever seen on a stock 302), is fantastically done for this kit and is a nice legacy piece.
Last year I built the wonderful 
I built the 426 HEMI in apple green and left it for what it was, nothing extra about it. Since then I’ve been pining to make it a soft-top 440-6 cubic inch equipped zinc yellow(or “lemon twist” if you wanna go by brochure names) ‘Cuda that I once saw at a car show in Germany. I also had the awesome opportunity since to work on a 1973 ‘Cuda since then, with the very same 440 Six Barrel engine underneath so it’s only been growing on me to get started on this kit. Sadly, the kit only comes with the HEMI engine for either option, the only part dedicated to something different is two different air cleaners.
But despite it having the wrong engine for what I wanted, I figured I was gonna use the extra customizability of the vehicle and not glue the air cleaner stuck to the model cause the ‘Cuda 440 also had the choice of a Shaker or a simple air-cleaner. Instead I was gonna glue the carburetors to their cleaners and be able to swap on the fly if I so desired. The kit definitely allows this and thank God for it cause making my mind up was hard, I love the shaker hoods on the early seventies Chrysler cars and the twin ram-air hood is fancy and all but nothing beats the brutal look of a loose shaker on a engine poking through. Hell, shakers are loved so much that it even saw a comeback on the modern Challenger as a popular aftermarket part. But, since the hood for the Shaker was warped some, for the sake of pictures and looking cleaner, I for now got the ram air hood on there.
Thanks to Keith Marks, I got my hands on the final piece that allows this kit to be a 440-6 instead of a HEMI on the outside at least: the iconic hockey stick stripes. Handily, the decal sheet also covers higher quality side marker lights, logos and so forth but the 440 decal is what completes the picture. And it helps to have some spare air cleaner decals for the future!
Ohhh yeah, the eighties. The TV shows during that period were and still are some of the wackiest, best and craziest by a far stretch. It was a era of masculinity(which sadly came with a fair bit of misogyny), filled with guys blowing crap up left, right and center. Every big action star had a trademark car to go along with and a theme tune to ride to. I mean, movies had their car stars but on TV series they stuck with their cars for nearly a decade in some cases.
Based on a mix of previous Chevy G-Series vans from the late seventies and early eighties, this kit has a giant parts amount. And when I say giant, I mean you can theoretically make this into whatever freaking version of the G-Series you want: a GMC Vandura, a Chevy G-series with stock features, the G-Series with deep wheels and custom options like side-pipes, giant headers and exhaust manifolds, it goes on and on.
Though like I said, might be for the builder’s sake of having a complete model and not just a empty hole where the engine would be like most Japanese curbside kits. There’s some other things about this I thoroughly enjoyed and wish was more common in the designs; the sprues have # through # sorting which makes life a helluvalot easier given this kit’s got over 200 parts easily and you get a good six or seven parts to increase the stability of the chassis with thick chunks of plastic(or crossbeams in the real world counterpart), which in the end just makes the van’s weight feel more balanced and a hell of a lot more stable.
Revell has made a few “annual” kits in the early nineties with some Ford and Mercury cars, like the Thunderbird and Cougar in specific. From ’89 through ’93, each year they put out a updated version of the model kit. In 1992 they put out the original which this kit was based on, a simple Thunderbird SC with the typical 2-in-1 treatment with a gargantuan body kit, no spoiler and a second set of wheels, oh and some extra decals for good measure.
I mean, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and all that, but whose brilliant idea was it to give the “sport” version Thunderbird logo dish wheels? On top of that, I wouldn’t say the default OEM T-Bird wheels are by any means pretty and it’s amusing to know that the supposedly sporty T-Bird had a bunch of hideous tear-drop hole wheels, but would it have killed someone to add some five spoke wheels, even a direct steal of the Mercury kit? I won’t go into depth about the lowrider even though the kit’s package shows it so proudly, but I’ll say the kit’s entirely the same besides the decals and color choices for the most part. And of course, the wheels. I wanted to attach some Pegasus wheels, which wouldn’t fit and as a second plan I had the 1994 Impala SS wheels ready and set, but the wheels were too wide to even come close to matching the body.
Other than that it shows the shared roots with the 
But what the hell, it all came together in the end! Another ever-so-forgotten tried-so-hard-but-got-nowhere early nineties car finished. I do really quite collecting these types of kits of cars that were meant to be so much more than they were and building them gives me a nice glimpse in what Ford had going on at the time. It’s a shame both the Cougar and Thunderbird are now just near forgotten vehicles of a near forgotten time.
