1991 GMC Syclone Marlboro Edition – Revell

GMC’s never really been a name you’d associate performance with, right? Generally it’s trucks, light trucks, pick up trucks and… shit, that’s just about it. For the most part, especially recently, GMC’s been the alternative to Chevrolet for the supposed “professional“. It’s a confusing thing, yet it’s simple as sin at the origin – they’re the same car with small cosmetic differences but according to GM, the Chevrolet’s the daily driver(therefor cheaper) meant to be worn down to just bolts as it racks up 500K miles, while the GMC is the work truck(for some reason more expensive) that is meant to be dented to the heavens and filthy as can be, but it’ll last the model’s lifespan and can be pawned off in favor for a newer model once it comes around. ^{(Excuse the sun-kissed as hell photos, they were taken on a foggy day with sun beaming through it like a ball of hellfire, once Spring rolls around they’ll be updated!)}

But in 1991, they changed their image significantly. Albeit very briefly, given the image swap lasted to about 1993. September ’91, Car & Driver magazine did an article on the newly spawned, all jet black, sleeked down and bodykitted out GMC truck and pitted its merit against a Ferrari 348TS from the same year. Now, you might think, yeah but the Ferrari isn’t the fastest they could’ve offered, the thing was a brick even with the 5.6 second 0-60 time, so on. But let’s not skimp over this detail – it’s a damn pick up truck. It still looks like that little bastard you’d see driven in middle of nowhere Idaho, ferrying stuff from A to B. Though granted, it no longer was a pick-up truck by definition given it had a weight-holding capacity of a songbird thanks to the tech-up it had received, GMC had a little sticker on the inside of the tailgate that advised you shouldn’t put more than 500 pounds of weight in the back(that’s 226kg). This meant it no longer was a pick-up truck, it was more a short car with lots of useless space attached to it.

Granted, all it had going for it was short term speed. While it ran to the 60 mile an hour mark in 4.6 seconds, it did only have a top speed of 126MPH(202KM/h). So while it has all of the merits of a true sports… truck, it also came with the downside of not being able to keep up with actual sports cars. But it’s not a big deal, the little Syclone had proven something and it had made its mark on the map. It out-dragged just about anything, Chevrolet Corvettes, Ferrari’s, Audi’s, BMW’s, it had the off-the-light speed boost that would allow you to be the badass around town. It was a good ride, it stopped well, it also lasted pretty long even though the turbocharger and liquid cooler had shorter lifespans(as they always do), it was a fun little truck. Which I suppose is the reason why people like Jay Leno own one and drive one still, just for funsies. People see a black pick up truck, think “typical American truck, all stickers, no speed” and then bolt away from said person at friggin’ light speed. A year later, GMC introduced the Typhoon, a closed bed with rear seats version of the Syclone. Came in different colors and slightly less power due to the weight re-distribution and such, but still a lightning bolt.

So yes! Long, long, long story short, it was a pretty impressive, albeit underappreciated little truck. Revell designed a kit around the truck back in 1991 and it was friggin’ stellar. It was a kit I accidentally stumbled upon after popping on eBay, just back in the hobby, literally after I made my first model kit in over a decade, thinking “wouldn’t it be cool if there was a Syclone kit, I saw a S-10 Monogram ad once so…“. And holy shit, there it was. It was the ’92 release, in all black, kind of milky dated decals but man I loved putting it together. It was complicated, it was pretty and dammit it gave me a little Syclone of my own. Looking back at it, I almost wish I hadn’t found it until now cause I really did try my best with it at the time and still I feel like I could do a ton better these days.

That being said, I bought a second one. Specifically for one reason; to make the Marlboro edition of the Syclone. In 1992, Marlboro, or rather Phillip Morris, Inc(whom are evil as sin, but y’know, car/kit blog, no bullshit) had a reward for the ten winners of the Marlboro Racing Contest ’92. Ten Syclones were given to the designer of the Corvette and Boss Mustangs, Larry Shinoda and he did the following: gave ’em T-tops with special holders in the bed, rear window that could slide down, special Boyd Coddington Cobra chrome-black wheels, Recaro seats and a MOMO sports steering wheel and of course, the “Hot Lick” bright red-as-sin paint job and Marlboro chevron-style stripes on the doors and hood. Now I should say right off the bat, the kit didn’t pack any Marlboro brand decals for a very simple reason: advertising cigarette brands is somewhere along the same line as putting tits on a billboard. I don’t give a damn myself, but folks, even for historical subjects(like say, a race literally called the Marlboro Racing Contest) say “nope”.

So I had to improvise and improvise I friggin’ well did. I had this decal sheet sitting in .PSD format for the better part of a year now, a semi-abandoned plan to turn a S-10 into a Baja S-10 and a GMC Syclone into a Sonoma GT. It wasn’t until I figured out that the newer release, the 2010 re-release of the kit packs all the stripes and white Syclone logos to make effectively a cigarette-brand-free version, but I didn’t wanna half-ass it and I had already gone full bore with the decal printing plan so I cooked up some extras on that sheet for the Marlboro version(which go for 8.50$ on eBay, gotta plug my own stuff somehow eh). All-in-all, that part was a reasonable success. Some of the other “additions” I had to figure out were, for instance, the black wheels with the chrome lip.

That was slightly more difficult as, A) the Boyd Coddington wheels are a rare one in their own right, as they were designed by the guy himself and he sadly passed away in 2008, so getting something even remotely similar in 1/25th scale… Yeah, no. B) the early nineties Revell wheel adapters were slightly… well, one size fits barely. So it had to be something from a similar era and luck would have it that some old Chevrolet Impala SS wheels from 1994 would be exact fits, I mean like perfect flush fit. I mean, unfortunate that I gutted a Impala SS model for parts but y’know, circle of a models life. Built, kept, torn asunder, re-built. The wheels just took a lick of semi-gloss black and wham, semi-good looking replacement of the custom Coddington wheels. The real version also has targa-tops which uhh… Yeah, I love them and American Sunroof Corp. did an ace job at making ’em look okay on the Syclone but, really, I did not want to ravage two T-top panels onto the already rather frail body and just painting them on seemed too much of a cop-out.

Some other differences between the original and the Marlboro version are also found under the hood. For instance, the intake plenum and the Garrett liquid-cooler housing were donned in red and chrome along with the rest, and y’know, had to go along with it. I will say this, the kit is spectacular and nothing short of epic but holy shit did they go all in on the engine bay. It is so, so well detailed. The cross-over air filter tubing, the way the turbo hooks up, the separate and ultra detailed A/C units, the liquid cooler and all the extras… This is a pick-up truck kit, by heart. It isn’t a best-seller, it’s not a hot topic, yet it gets so much love that it boggles my mind. They put so, so much effort into the engine block and engine bay, and it’s only been used three times. In ’92 for the Syclone, in ’93 for the S-10 versions and one last time in ’10 for this re-release and that’s it. Not to mention, the interior detail is crisp as all hell and all it would need to be utterly friggin’ fantastic would’ve been a dashboard decal. Something I unfortunately couldn’t craft up myself, it was too difficult to find a good dashboard picture to base it off alone.

The first of two downsides I encountered wasn’t necessarily the fault of Revell, but more by the package itself. It was packaged in a bigger, flatter box(think Aoshima sized boxes), however it had the unfortunate problem of it having been crammed in there tightly – most of the bodykit had warped to half a C-shape by the time I got my hands on ’em.

Which y’know… Sucks. It truly, truly sucks. It’s made putting the bodykit on the thing hard and it kept tearing itself loose from the glue even after being taped together and the rear side was a total loss as it just didn’t have the surface to be strongly glued together enough for the shape to hold – so there’s some severe panel gaps there.

Whats the second downside? Well that’s a legacy thing of old. Like I said earlier, the wheel adapters are of the old Monogram kits of the late eighties that basically just… fit one type of tire. Usually, Monogram either had Goodyear GS-C tires(branded for this kit, even), Goodyear GT Radials(usually for muscle-cars) and Polysteel Radials for older kits. This meant that they had to roll with the old wheel adapters too and boy are they a wobbly pile of wank. Both front wheels sit at a hideous angle and the rear wheels wobble all over the place and there’s no fixing it now given they’re the click-to-forever-connect type. But y’know what, fine – it can’t all be perfect and I’m happy as a clam nonetheless.

It always feels good to tinker on these old pick-up kits and both Revell-Monogram and AMT Ertl have shown up to the stage with stellar kits, whether it is the S-15 types from GMC or the S-10 types from Chevrolet, they’ve both been on top of their game with the releases. Chassis, body, engine, interior, it all gets an equal amount of love from the companies and it’s even a bit strange that some of their more well-desired car kits come with less detail in some cases. But y’know, lamenting blah-blah and all. Ah well, onwards to the Sonoma SLS soon!

’91 GMC Syclone Marlboro Edition specifications:
Kit: #85-7213
Skill Level: 2
Parts: 132
Molded in: White
Scale: 1/25