There’s been a brief moment of not freakin’ raining and being dark as sin all the time, however it was roughly -2°C outside so I braved the freezing cold to snap some decent pictures of the recent builds, yay for ass weather!
Anyway, this kit I’ve been working on for a month-ish, it’s always gone back in the line for me due to the sheer aggravation it would cause me.
It’s always been on my radar, even while I don’t particularly care for NASCAR, it did shape and define the muscle car era which does spike my interest. Richard Petty in particular, from the early sixties through the eighties he’s been around kicking ass and taking names, and Revell Monogram’s given his car a rather appropriate “Legend Series” re-release, still having the original 1985 casting.
I already own some of the muscle cars he’s driven through the years, and I love Plymouth so it’s a hand-in-hand ordeal, but the iconic two tone STP Red/Petty Blue set-up through the seventies is what really drew my attention. I tried getting a hold of the ’73 Charger, 
turns out it’s only available in 1/16th scale, and the 1/25th scale kit hasn’t been made since the seventies and buying one of those gets me to the risk that a decal reliant build might have dodgy badly aged decals.
So I ended up going with the ’84 Grand Prix, a icon in it’s own right. It was the car that gave Petty his last victory, it was a record breaker in lap time and it caused one of the closest victories in recent memory, barely a fender length. I have to admit, one of the reason why I like the car is also cause it still resembles the ’84 Pontiac Grand Prix some, unlike more modern NASCAR vehicles that are nothing more than a chassis with painted plastic on it.
But back to the build, as I said it was one aggravating pain in the ass. That about summarizes it. It really began to remind me of the ’69 Mercury Cougar build, though that still holds the number one spot in regards to worst kits ever with ease, and it would be insulting the Grand Prix kit. Perhaps I’m being too harsh, it does deserve consideration due to the sheer frustration it ended up giving, not to mention the kit preformed the carnal sin of all model kit sins – It was missing parts. Several, even. And can’t just mail Revell about it cause this kit hasn’t been in production since 1998.
I was missing the entire radiator unit, intake and fan were missing. The fan I managed to scavenge from spare parts but with the radiator unit missing, it looks insanely bare in the engine compartment. Another righteous pain in the ass is the fact that the kit is literally the 1985 release in a shinier jacket, the instructions are still crude and explain the complicated roll cage build with a series of arrows that can only be called a clusterfuck. Oh and not to mention, the two iconic paints are called “Petty Blue” and “Fluorescent Red”, God there has never been a better time for Tamiya styled mixing guide lines cause excuse me but what the hell does it take to make Petty blue and fluorescent red? I tried mixing to the best of my ability but what the hell, it ended up alright.
The building of the kit itself was mighty frustrating too, the wheels don’t fit cause the prong is about four times smaller than the hole of the inner wheel, so they sorta wobble all over. The engine has to be awkwardly placed on virtually nothing. And the build claims to be one of those “you can remove the shell to show the innards” kits, but trust me, unless you wanna tear bumpers off, that thing is there to stay. Whats truly strange is that the box build model has different decals than the one’s that are with the kit itself.
But I digress, I’m complaining far too much. It has some upsides too, I mean with some effort and truly guessed paint work cause it has no guidelines or indicators where to stop the red and continue the blue, it still ends up looking like a nifty model. The interior is really high quality, with interior camera, complicated and very realistic rollcage, extra detailing to fit all the things that the NASCAR vehicles come equipped with, it’s all there. It’s just a shame the rest is half-assed.
What isn’t half-assed however, is that the decal sheet is of the same silkscreen stuff that comes with Revell’s “Pro Modeler” line, like the Daytona Charger for instance. Which ensured that the decals survived to look as good as they do and applying them was actually really, really pleasant. Shame it was a damn hassle to get the paint to match the color of the STP red, but whatcha gonna do, it’s for authenticity after all.
But at least I got one more of the G-body collection complete.
’84 Richard Petty #43 STP Pontiac Grand Prix specifications:
Kit: #85-3151
Skill Level: 3
Parts: 90
Molded in: White
Scale: 1/24