Ages ago I bought the Camaro SS kit from Revell Germany, which to be fair was a very, very good kit. Albeit literally this kit minus the 2-in-1 and plus a ton more decals. But I got to admit, while it’s a great kit, that Z28/RS 2-in-1 thing is fabulous. Having the closed up hidden headlights as well as the visible headlights grille in the same box makes for some great variety, if not for spare parts in the future.
This kit has two other things the Revell Germany kit didn’t have, one’s the gargantuan 21 inch wheels featured on the box art. The other is that it comes with little to no decals whatsoever. No dash decals, just the sponsor stickers and the black and white stripes that run over the car. That’s it, which is odd coming from a 2011 release. It’s molded 
wonderfully, just a very disappointing sheet of decals knowing full well that all the other ’69 Camaro kits of Revell have the whole array. Especially the ’69 Camaro convertible kit which is literally this kit, minus the roof.
But I digress, I bought a photo etched parts set from Model Car Garage, which proved to be useful to get the extra detail across especially since it contained dial decals(or rather a plastic sheet with the black details of the dials that you cut out and put on a colored background) to bring out the dashboard a fair bit more. Along with a few Magnum 500 wheels stolen from a old ’68 Dodge Charger model I had lying around that could lose it’s extra parts, largely cause I know a guy that owns this ’69 Camaro convertible around where I live that set some Mag 500’s on there from a Challenger he owned previously and damn in my opinion it looks very, very suitable on a Camaro so I figured, I’d do it too!
This is the first Camaro I’ve build yet that didn’t fit the yellow/black-stripe theme I’ve got going on for a couple of years now, which to be fair, I should’ve long ago. Camaro’s look 
great in every shade as well as yellow. Though it’s also the first Camaro I made a right mess of with the rear end. Granted it’s half my fault, half molding.
I ran into the issue that the rear bumper was molded wrong, it had a sizable chunk of plastic on the inner-side and it had warped the bumper to hell. Which I didn’t notice until I had glued it to the tail with and pressed it down with tape, the warp was strong enough to rip the tape in half en with that half the paint on the rear.
But oh well! Just a scuff on a otherwise great model, honestly. The only two issues I got with just about every Camaro kit that Revell has made are that the stance is… odd. Like it’s really, really low by default. And there’s no fixing it cause the suspension is kind of one giant piece on the front, so just putting some plastic on top of the coils with epoxy isn’t a solution here. The other issue is that the wheels just don’t stay on. Period.
I have epoxied every wheel to the axles on just about every Revell Camaro model for a couple years now and that’s just about the only way they are willing to stay on. And for once I figured the car would look cleaner without white letter decals on the tires, I had a set of Goodyear Polyglas F70-15 decals ready but I gotta admit, it looks sleeker without it.
The detail of the exterior is pretty damn good, the mold lines are really hard to find and even without the photo etched parts, with a silver/chrome acrylic pen and a steady hand you can easily get the raised details properly chromed. The good news is if you build a Z/28 version, you get proper 3D badges for it, so that’s nice!
Interior and engine detail is as always really, really good. Interior could’ve benefited from some wood panel decals(akin to most modern Revell releases) but for the rest it looks really, really good. For once I went all the way and attempted to get some seatbelt detail in there, first bad attempt for anything, right!
The Z/28 engine, which is the only one in the kit given it’s called “Camaro Z/28” on the box, if you’d like the SS 396 Turbo-jet you’d have to get the SS/RS kit instead, is really good lookin’. It’s a slightly dated mold by today’s standards but man, it holds up to the highest standards. I would’ve end up putting a 396ci engine in there but well, I love building models but I don’t really see the appeal in buying a whole separate kit just to steal the engine from it.
Revell’s put out many, many 1969 Camaro kits out there. From the RS and SS, to the Z/28 and it’s convertible cousin and of course the ZL-1. There’s also the specialty releases like the two Yenko Camaro’s, of which I reviewed the older one a long time ago. And honestly they’re all great! Really wish they’d give engine block’s a separate release or cram more engine options into a single box but yeah, they’d give up a chunk of revenue. Ah well, can hope!
’69 Chevrolet Camaro SS 396 specifications:
Kit: #85-4128
Skill Level: 2
Parts: 118
Molded in: White
Scale: 1/25