1969 Oldsmobile Cutlass 442 W-30 – AMT Ertl

I’m doing this more often and often it seems, building a kit I’ve built before to do it again only in a different manner, using the same parts and a fair amount of extras. All of that combined with the good teachings of having screwed up the first time and knowing what pitfalls to avoid this time through.

A good two years back I built the ’69 Hurst/Olds Cutlass 455 and I wrote a dingy review about it before I knew what the hell wanted to do with this website of mine. Anyhow, I bought the same exact kit just with some extras such as the Model Car Garage photo etch set(albeit for the ’72 Cutlass that I got two months after I built the damn thing, but it’s the 442, W30 and Cutlass logos that matter!) along with a dashboard set from Best Model Car Parts to bring out the dash a bit more.

Now, way, way, waaay back in 1988 both MPC and AMT Ertl had the Oldsmobile Cutlass 442 kits out on the market, I believe there were more before but I honestly don’t recall, it was a pretty nice kit all around, spare American Racing Torq-Thrust II’s, different carb and air cleaner set up, nice things like that. Now in the early 90’s, they expanded on this with a ’69 Hurst/Olds with the appropriate 455 cubic inch engine. And boy did this kit see some re-releasing, it’s been re-released close to five times now just like the ’69 Mercury Cougar. Though unlike the Cougar, this kit is actually really good!

Anyhow, the kit is still the same kit as it was in the eighties. It’s got the default re-release package of the 2010 plus years of AMT Ertl where they give the box a “retro” look, add pad printed tires that are actually super, super nice and on top of everything else, they expand the decal sheet by… two license plates or so. The whole ordeal is still the same too, building this model is a bit of a shamble; the front suspension(with nice turnable wheels, hurray!) is prone to coming loose and allows the car to sink, which happened to mine.

The other is that the weight of the entire chassis rests on the front and rear bumpers, which believe me, is a bad plan on their part as this allows for them to be torn off if you ever pick it up, sort of quickly. God bless epoxy! Also, once again, the Torqs don’t fit the tires. This is one of those issues that I keep having with AMT recently, they always sit slightly outside the tires and the backings keep falling out.

But back to the model in question, I decided upon an all black Cutlass 442 with the Torq wheels. There’s always something so sinister and vicious looking about an all black Oldsmobile. I did the same thing with the ’84 Cutlass and wished to do the same for the ’72 but settled on silver at the time.

And the nice thing of this kit having originated as the model I wanted to build is that the entire thing is already a 442, just missing the decals(and now the engine, of course) and you take it from there. The things that make it the Hurst/Olds is the giant intake on the hood, the spoiler and the H/O shifter and gearbox. And they’re all separate parts! So reverting this kit to the regular 442 is easy-as-can-be.

It has its issues, but the whole kit is actually quite crisply molded. Like I said, it’s building it that is the annoying bit and getting the things to stay where they are is quite the handful of work but despite that, you get yourself a fantastic freakin’ car. Mine is a little stanced due to the crappy suspension and a little more beefed out cause the kit only packs the Rocket V8 455 H/O engine of course, but I’m glad I went and gotten the kit again to build the stock 442 at last.