1969 Pontiac GTO “The Judge” – Monogram

A 1994 re-issue of from 1982 release from Monogram, and God it’s a great kit. Though it’s entirely molded in a semi-gloss orange, engine, interior etc. It’s molded pretty solid and has little excess flash on the trays and frames, fair amount of detail and pretty clear instructions.

That’s the short version, now onto the long one! Pontiac kits are few and far between, Revell has a couple of fantastic ones, AMT has one or two decent ones and AMT has the large chunk of the Pontiac licenses under their belt and have been putting out absolutely terrible kits since the early 1980s.

However Monogram has a couple of Pontiacs, one of which is the GTO. And not just that, it’s the “Judge” version. Though that being said, the rear wing is optional and as is the hood mounted tach, so you could make it a regular bit-more-sporty GTO Ram Air. In itself it’s a great kit, the exterior looks amazing in the stock orange which I just ended up keeping and giving it a glossy clear coat.

So it’s as box stock as it can be, the body at least. Other than that, it wasn’t a really giant challenge to make it look as good as it is on the box or in real life, so that’s a terrific bonus point. The instructions are clear and detailed enough luckily to make sure you don’t miss details like the chrome lip on the air intakes on the front bumper, the intakes on the hood and so on. Also something I personally wish was a standard for all instruction sheets is a body color/interior color/decal color option sheet. It’s fantastic to know which color the GTO’s came in and which color(of the three) stripes go on them to match.

For the most part, the kit fits together perfectly. The only mishaps are tiny, like the exhaust pipes don’t actually link up to the manifolds, the wheels sit a tiny bit too far backwards, especially on the front and the tire profile in… small. Oddly small that it stands out pretty badly on front views of the car.

But as I said earlier, this model is largely box standard as you see it. Just painted, of course. The only things added are the Dunlop G/T Qualifier decals on the tires(courtesy of Joseph over at Fireball Models), some sparkplug wires and wire straps from the Model Car Garage and that’s about it, really! This kit is 22 years old as of writing, yet it goes together and looks better from the box than most modern kits do!

Though, one thing needs to be said. I’m very sure the wheels are… way off. The chrome lips for instance shouldn’t even be there and the tires are too big to compensate for the giant dishes. I could’ve bought the 1/24 GTO Judge wheels from Fireball Models, but I only found this out as I was building it that they existed.

It’s a 1/24 scale car though it looks a bit huge compared to the other models I have(which are nearly all 1/25) but it’s gonna sit just fine with it’s other 1/24 Monogram brothers like the ’71 HEMI Cuda, ’69 440 Six Pack, ’70 GSX and ’67 Mustang GT350.