In ’82, the first light compact pick up since 1972(the Isuzu KB, aka the “Chevrolet LUV”) was shoved out the door and it kind of introduced the world to a whole new range of possibilities. Granted, Australia had been doing it since the fifties and we got close now and again with the Ford Ranchero and Chevrolet El Camino(and the GMC counterpart, the Caballero), but that was more a plan of “attach sport car to truck” and less “turn car into truck”, which is the route the Australians took.
So just a few years after the second oil crisis, somewhere at GM, a little light lit up above someone’s head and basically said; “What if we downsize the K-10’s platform and engine to a regular car?”. And holy shit, it worked! This is one of those few stories from the 1980s from GM where you can actually say that they did a decent job! Granted, Jeep beat ’em to it with little light utility vehicles, but they were ahead of Ford and Chrysler and that was something they needed at the time.
It was the exact opposite of all the terrible things in the 1980s, it had decent fuel economy(one option was the out-dated Iron Duke I4, but it sure was reliable) , it could carry a fair amount of stuff in the bed and you could literally let it sit in the marshes of Florida or the woods of Wyoming and it would still start, every day. It’s one of those things that we always had but never decided to tinker on, like the old fifties Ford F100 and Chevrolet S10s. They took the idea they had and raised the ride, lowered the weight, better tires slapped on and gave it small blocks that could still preform well enough to carry a bed full of crap. And as the eighties progressed, they added more engine choices, better suspension options and of course with those options, a Baya version was on the horizon.
So in 1993, it was time for the cube to get a face-lift and get turned into the slightly rounded out S-10, which AMT happily made some kits for in the mid nineties. But before the car got replaced, Monogram and Revell made two kits. One was the ’91 GMC Syclone, a whole new tool truck based on the absolutely badass truck and the other is this one, the ’93 S-10. Though weirdly enough, the Syclone was released in 1992 and the S-10 in 1993, both come from the exact same mold just with some differences.
It comes with the 4.3L Vortec V6 engine, which is replicated beautifully to great detail. It has some different options on the sprues for stuff like a plated intake manifold and whatnot, but for the most part it shares parts with the Syclone that you sadly can’t use cause most of the Syclone unique parts have a sprue dedicated to it which you don’t get here. You get half the turbo-charger, smaller A/C hose system cause the turbocharger takes up a lot of real estate, so forth. Other than that? Just like the real trucks; damn near the same.
Actually I gotta point out something that makes this kit freakin’ awesome, since I’ve talked about the Syclone so much. Back in 1991, there were several iterations at the entry level for a turbocharged S-10… You had of course the Sonoma GT from GMC and a utter rarity; the “Cameo” and “Cameo EL”(The EL only came with the front and rear bumper, the regular Cameo had the whole kit). It came with the Syclone styled front and rear bumpers with fog lights, fender flares, bucket seats and so forth. The kit has all the bits to make it into a Cameo and the decal sheet has all the decals to make it happen too. It’s so nice to see something which is nowadays so rare and forgotten to have a lasting existence through a kit, a bit like the AHC-100 Camaro.
So when I bought this kit and lemme tell you, it’s a Goddamn rarity these days, the person showed the box and all the bits were intact. Cue me receiving the thing and, well, whaddya know – it was absolutely demolished. Most of the front of the body was bend so badly that the fenders snapped off and the wheel wells had cracked open like eggshells. The front air dam had snapped to eight bits and the bed had bend like a U shape.
Why doesn’t the hood fit in the pictures? Cause of that. Why are there visible “burn” like marks on the door panels? Its cause I had to literally melt the plastic together in order to have it maintain shape and not snap in half when the interior bucket went in. Why is the ride height so off? Well, with the jacked up front and the bend frame, it’s a miracle it sits the way that it does.
But y’know, despite that fact that someone wrapped my package so tight that it crushed the pieces in transit, the kit goes together so frickin’ smoothly. All the bits fall into place and it’s lovely. Hell, there’s just one that really doesn’t want to fit well and that’s the rear bumper, it just sort of floats against the tail cemented to the end of the frame. And that’s really about it when it comes to non-fitting parts, it all goes together so well. To be fair though, a lot of the late eighties and early nineties releases of nearly every manufacturer go together well and have superb detailing and this one’s no different.
Initially, I wanted to make it a dark metallic red with silver stripes, but then I spotted the absolutely shit shape the kit was in upon arrival and decided to just go with a glossy red and leave it at that and use the time I’d have been taping off parts to actually… fix them. On top of that, I used some BF Goodrich Radial T/A tire decals to make the tires pop out some more and kind of left it at that. I spend so much time fixing the thing that I hardly detailed the car in the end, I wanted to give it a SS/Syclone interior like I did on the ’95 S-10 and the Syclone but, well, it became a case of just being happy that I managed to get it together in the end.
Lord knows that if I ever get another one of these kits, either the Syclone or this one, I’m turning it into a Baya Truck or a Sonoma GT, already got the decals planned out, now just to find a kit for less than a hundred bucks. And not have it crushed… That’d be nice.
’93 Chevrolet S-10 specifications:
Kit: #85-2434
Skill Level: 2
Parts: 125
Molded in: Pastel Blue
Scale: 1/25