SUV and pick up truck kits are few and far between, and even then they’re of wildly varying quality at best. From the simplistic yet well produced GMC Sierra and Dodge Ramcharger, to the highly detailed and excellent ’93 and ’95 Chevrolet S-10 and of course the GMC Syclone. But then, weirdly enough, there’s kits like the one here – the Cadillac Escalade. Revell’s put out two of these kits over the years, one in 2002 along with the release of the technically second generation of the Escalade and the one I have here just a short two years later. The regular Escalade, even though Revell put out a ’06 Escalade EXT(albeit as a custom version) in 2007 and AMT themselves did a stock EXT at one point, no ESV sadly.
But, technically the second generation of the Escalade? Well, apparently there’s a direct clone of the 1999 GMC Yukon Denali to compete with the ever successful Lincoln Navigator – a big ol’ SUV with extra options, a big ol’ V8 engine and seats so comfortable and luxurious that wouldn’t be out of place in a opera house. In 2002, the Escalade was finally allowed to be its own player on the field instead of dressing a old one up in new clothes and it turned out to be a huge success! Over one hundred thousand total sales from ’02 through ’06, when the updated model was revealed.
I always, always adored the Escalade. Ever since I got to play Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition back in… what was it, 2005 I think, I loved the Escalade. It featured on the box art in vermillion red metallic with these giant TIS-04 wheels and while I utterly hate how lowriders can truly ruin a car or how Hollywood loves to turn SUVs into everything they shouldn’t be – there’s just something about that one that clicked with me. I ended up going with metallic black cause the spray paint merchant I always shop from didn’t have vermilion red in stock at the moment but I will definitely have to buy it regardless for the ’12 Chevy Cruze and the eventual ’05 Escalade EXT that I am gonna buy and build sooner or later.
Though unlike the EXT kit, this one doesn’t have a engine. The only semblance of a engine is on the extremely well detailed bottom side. The chassis is so utterly well detailed that it kind of hurts – there’s obviously a ton of dedication done by the creators of the kit, why would they skip on the engine? Too costly to tool a 5.3L Vortec V8? It’s just… such a goddamn shame. I have to admit, a lot of the sadness lies with the Escalade EXT kit having a full engine and engine bay detail, but alas I’m just droning on now.
The other extremely nice bits of the kit lie with Revell’s dedication in making this kit friggin’ epic. Tinted windows, for instance, a thing the real Escalade has by default much like many of the luxury SUVs and this kit supplies tinted windows for the rear doors, rear windows and trunk window and clear for the rest. It comes with two sets of custom wheels, one set’s a wire dish wheel and the other are these half-DUB Cyphen S745, half-TIS 04 looking wheels. Hell, maybe they’re properly licensed, I wouldn’t know, 20 inch plus SUV wheels isn’t my area of expertise sadly. And with ’em come these really nicely detailed rubber Toyo Proxes tires that feel as close to the real thing as they can get, like it’s up there with Aoshima and Tamiya tire quality.
Something else that’s a rarity among model kits; functional trunk. Though it was briefly a common thing on the California Wheels and Uptown series of Revell kits, like the Chrysler 300C, Cadillac STS-V, Dodge Magnum and so on, they had functional doors or a functional trunk or in some cases even both. I dunno, generally I don’t really care but with the luxurious nature of the Cadillac obviously the interior is something that needs to be taken care of and seen. It’s also partially due to the 2-in-1 nature of the kit, as one half of the kit also has these giant speakers and subwoofers in the trunk instead of a bench seat, even though it does come with the bench seat as you can see on my take on it.
Despite the utter lack of a engine, the kit makes up for that by shoving detail elsewhere. As I said, the chassis got a massive amount of love but the interior is no different. The quality of the seats, the seatbelts on them, the dashboard functions, the ceiling TV screen, the consoles, so forth, they’re all crisply detailed. Plus a good solid amount of decals to bring the extra detail out some more. What I truly love about the interior of this kit is how it’s put together; you build essentially the entire interior frame onto the chassis with the insides of the doors and walls and you slot it into the empty body shell and they both connect like a friggin’ puzzle piece, absolute perfection. The ’06 Dodge Magnum kit has a similar interior construction and… it’s just so solid and it goes into the shell so damn well that I honestly think this is how they should do it more often!
Though of course, not many cars are as padded inside as Cadillacs… It’s like triple brick walls in houses up in Scandinavia in there. But to carry on about the positives here, the rear end of the car is also just stellar. The headlamp housing is slotted inside and connecting the tail lamps isn’t awkward as all hell for a change, plus bonus points to Revell for individually segment the reverse lights! No need to use a silver marker for once plus it looks a thousand times better for a change!
So… onto the less than stellar. Well, first of all, the way the kit’s packaged without any supports for the body, especially the rear end, it’s super prone to warping. Mine was bent inwards a fair amount and the grille had cracked and according to the delightful folks over at model kit forums I found out that I wasn’t the only victim. The other downsides? Well, it would’ve been nice to have stock wheels… I wouldn’t have used them, but they did shape them for the chassis, would’ve been nice! I know it would require extra rubber tires and all that hassle but y’know, I can dream right!
And while the decals are subtle and let some nice real world licensing show through(like the Steve Foley Cadillac branded plate, nice one Revell), they were incredibly frugal with the decals for this kit. Two thirds of the sheet are the ugly-as-sin flame decals, the rest is Cadillac and Escalade emblems, oil pan sticker and the interior bits and while I won’t be asking for duplicates(even though AMT is beginning to make it a custom to include spares, thank God), just two Escalade scripts even though there’s obviously three on the car? No center console decal? I mean, it just would’ve been nice.
But meh, at least for the little issues and downsides and the kit having no engine, it was well worth it. Well worth it. I love building SUV and pick up truck kits every now and then and having a Cadillac with the collection is a hell of a welcome sight. I still would kill for my personal favorite Escalade, the ’15 ESV with the long tail lights that looks like a Volvo 850 Turbo from space(that’s a good thing!) but, hey, maybe some day. The kit inspired me to look for the Escalade EXT and get that thing going in vermilion red metallic so it can join it’s shorter brother. Serious props to Revell for this one.
’05 Cadillac Escalade specifications:
Kit: #85-2881
Skill Level: 2
Parts: 95
Molded in: White and Black
Scale: 1/25
Man, you gotta love the Dodge Dart/Plymouth Valiant line. Well, the second coming of the line at least, right before the oil crisis turned it into a ghastly ectoplasmic fart of its former self. It kicked off in 1960, so it’s actually reasonably young compared to most of the other cars in the Chrysler line-up, though of course, it lasted a mere 19 years before being shelved for good. It had a bit of a wandering early years, first year being a slightly smaller yet still full size Dodge. The ’61 through late ’62 Dart saw its first true direction towards becoming the compact we know love today, with the ’63 Dart taking on the A-platform from there on ’til the day it got shelved.
And back in 1998, AMT Ertl produced a kit version of the ’71 Duster. Technically, the kit’s a 2-in-1 and has something I appreciate so much, words can’t quite describe it – engine options. Revell only ever does it with their convenient Chrysler 440 Magnum/426 HEMI engines cause the Magnum and HEMI rocker covers and intake manifold are so easily interchangeable but AMT’s got the only 1/25th scale 340 engine that has the crispness and quality of a Revell mold, and what did they do with it? They gave it the standard four barrel carb 340 as well as the Six Pack carb set up with the different air cleaner. What else makes it a 2-in-1? Well, the kit can be built like I did it, the 340 four barrel equipped Duster, or the 340-6 Duster Twister(with the twin ram-air intakes and the “twister” hood stripes) and they’re subtle enough to not require massive changes, yet they are truly two different cars.
Speaking of the stripes, like I said it comes with all the things you’d need to make a 340 Wedge or a 340 Twister in both black and white, though sadly given the kit’s from 1998 the decals have gone milky as all shit. But y’know, I made due with ’em as the age only really shows through on the rear end of the car. Other than the decal issues, it is really a truly fantastic kit. It’s so well thought out, even the separate frame from the chassis where the engine sits on actually has the structural integrity to be able of holding onto the weight, unlike the ’71 Charger kit. The wheels actually sit on their supports and they actually stay in their tires! Holy shit, the wheels are good for a change!
All in all, it was a fun kit to put together. The “Yellow Green” RAL color spraypaint pops nicely in the sunlight and looks to be close enough to the Sassy Green hi-impact color and that matte black hood that goes over into the C-pillar, I love it. Easily one of the prettiest Plymouths that ever saw the light of day, right up there with the ‘Cuda. It’s a shame the Duster has just… popped out of existence after 1976.
Last year I built Revell’s wonderful 
So I came in prepared this time! The kit is rare, very rare. It’s also from that era in the nineties that Revell made easily their best kits and improved on older ones in spectacular fashion, giant expanded decal sheets, all parts from separate releases included in one, so forth. The 
Like I said at the beginning, Revell did just one production run of the Aerocoupe model kit, which feels awfully similar to the real life version also being a supremely brief and desired run. And even as a whole new kit, yet again the decals fell the fuck apart. I mean, Goddammit there’s just no getting around the fact that decal sheets from Revell between 1997 and 2000 were absolute balls. So thank God for that decal bonder I used, cause it finally allowed me to get the decals on at last.
Rick Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors ’til 2009 
And hotdamn did we get some variety. We got the Special Edition, which I got here, with the standard SS model but also a 1LE inspired look as an alternative, while AMT Ertl put out the normal ’10 SS as well but also some variants like a highway patrol car and the 2010 Indianapolis Pace Car so in terms of choice we got nothing to complain. However, when it comes to how well both of the new tools end up going together, I gotta hand it to Revell. I mean, AMT isn’t far behind, it’s just a fair bit clunkier all around. Nearly every aspect of it has something that won’t sit well or required some serious force to get into place.
They decided that for some reason, metal rods and little metal screws to attach the big heavy wheels to. So here’s the kicker; no wheel they’ve ever made fits on these things. On top of that, it’s real hard to force them on when the complicated suspension bits are literally millimeters thick at best so you’ve got no chance in hell to actually get ’em on properly. This all in the name of getting wheels that turn… And guess what! They still won’t after cause the Goddamn things will drop off at the slightest tiniest little bit of breeze coming near ’em.
Though I had never considered to expand on the four Camaro Anniversary Editions, given they were actually as they were from the box with no outside help for the most part. Revell with the 
So we’ve got the 45th Anniversary done with and the FIFTY as well, yet it has friggin’ 2 more years to do to even deserve the 45th one to begin with. But I digress… I was pointed towards 
In the end, even if it was a super unnecessary commemorative edition, I am happy as hell that it exists cause it allows me to expand the Anniversary collection from four up to 6. Though, the 20th version doesn’t quite count based on the fact that the only differences from the standard models was the little embroidered 20th Anniversary logo on the dash but meh, screw it, it’s gonna be a part of the line up.
Right, so! Another MPC annual of a Malaise Era victim, turned into a traditional and very typical MPC kit by turning it into this horrendously ugly police car with the name only a man in his late forties could think of in 1979; “Squad Rod“. He almost certainly nodded appreciatively towards his marketing superiors and used hand signals when he said those words. I mean, woof. Granted, normally I kind of like the idea of the weird, wacky takes that MPC used to do, like the supremely odd 
So, what about the Nova? Well, it’s got a rather long lineage that got shot down in a matter of a single year. It started off as a coupe-slash-sedan on a compact chassis in 1961 as the “Chevrolet Chevy II” and… it kind of stayed that way until it’s demise in 1979(though it saw a small come back as a rebadged Toyota Corolla/Sprinter with slight changes, but we don’t count that one), Revell and AMT Ertl have made several beautiful takes on the Novas of the sixties, with my personal favorite being the Revell 
MPC/Round 2’s got a great trend of bringing back the models that essentially were the last of their line, which I am a very big fan of. In some cases, it’s a good reminder of how some models farted themselves into the annals of history(the real ones at least) like the 
Well, shit, I apologize, here I am ranting on for four paragraphs about the wheels. Back to the model’s more nicer features then. So the kit’s got a decent attempt at a 350 cubic inch V8, which was also found in the late seventies MPC Camaro kits for obvious reasons. It’s actually not bad, for a change! They’re usually terrible with engines, especially the Chrysler ones but this one’s pretty damn alright! It’s nice to wanna see the under-hood part of a MPC kit again for a change, it’s been a while. The interior tub isn’t molded very well, a lot of the details have gone a-miss but still, there’s nothing to truly complain about in the end. I mean, outside of inaccuracies. For instance, the dash is from 1975 with the square speedometer and… well, generally nothing had been updated past the 1975 mark.
On top of that is something I can’t really blame the kit for, is the stance. The “Squad Rod” stance has the rear raised significantly with much thicker tires and the front sits lower on smaller tires. There’s no way around this, doubt they ever meant for it to stand like a normal Nova but, well, I suppose it adds some aggressiveness to a otherwise dull as sin car. And weirdly enough, it has bend inwards on the front left so no matter the work, the left front wheel will angle inwards cause of the chassis being jacked up. Mold issue? Packing issue? Hell if I know, all I know is that it annoys the ever living shit out of me when I look at it.
1971 was a good year for muscle cars all in all, we’ve gotten several overhaul of models that year like the ’71 Mustang becoming more square, the ’71 Charger becoming less square, the ’71 ‘Cuda becoming even more of a brutal beast to be reckoned with, the ’71 Javelin AMX took on its now iconic shape and it just goes on and on like this. Among the awesome new editions, facelifts and continuations of great cars came the shift of Super Bee exteriors, from being a Coronet to being a Charger all of the sudden. And again, just like most of Chrysler’s vehicles, the B-body vehicles got a friggin’ plethora of choices for the buyer.
You could have your car equipped with a mish-mash of trim level parts, if you had the cash for it and a dealer with connections. Sadly, the ’71 Charger was also the last of many things. The 440 Six Pack engine was discontinued for 1972, as were the hi-impact colors that now truly define muscle cars and worst of all; the Super Bee was killed off. Which is a friggin’ shame, given how good it looked.
The cast quality is so unbelievably high, down to the seams of the seats and the extremely clear Charger scripts on the body. The grille and tail valances have supreme detail and was all a breeze to let pop cause with the foundation being so friggin’ well detailed, just meant a single coat of paint and a bit of rubbing would replicate factory level detail. Goddamn, I hope they earned back every cent triple on this cast and mold, that’s how supremely high level it is and it deserves all the praise it can get. I kind of think I should’ve wired the engine up cause the detailed engine bay deserves it but… I dunno, I just don’t enjoy doing it too often and I shouldn’t force it on myself cause it’ll just have me half-assing it supremely.
One’s just a personal wish that would kill off creativity but… screw it, gotta throw it out there. The interior shell is built attaching the doors and such to the chassis, which is fine and allows for us to add the detail to the door panel like the wood grain and chrome accents, but it’ll always snap off when you gotta force it into the body shell. I’m stuck on the thought between “should detail come before structural integrity” or “should structural integrity overcome detail”. Obviously, it’s detail overcomes structural strength, but it could’ve used some more strength, like a insert for the back pillar pads or something. The second is a bit of a pet peeve – the entire engine rests on a single square frame and the frame is only attached by a third of the whole thing so chances of it snapping off anywhere during the insertion of the chassis/interior or while you’re working on anything else is Goddamn massive. It looks better like this, yes. But functions a thousand times worse than were it so that the front frame was cast to the chassis already. There is a third fault but that’s no issue of the kit and more cause of the previous owner’s care of the kit – the chassis got warped significantly and thanks to that it flatout refuses to allow the rear valance to connect to the trunk which causes that giant wedge you see in the pictures. Though of course, once Missing Link sends the rear end; that’ll be fixed!
Every once in a while I enjoy building one of these Japanese car kits, especially those by 
But when it comes to drifting, generally I don’t really care. Actually, I should correct myself and say that I don’t care at all. Which I suppose is a shame, cause the cars not only look amazing, they’re wondrous pieces of tech themselves too. Plus it’s a feat of strength in itself when you can control a car so well you can turn it on a dime and cause its ass to come within millimeters of a wall and look stylish doing so. Now Aoshima’s been doing a line of drift cars for God knows how long now, you name a company or a tuning shop with a car under their wing and chances are they got a kit of it one way or another. 
So what else can be said? Well, sadly no engine though I am definitely gonna buy the S13 kit with the SR20DET engine in it, cause I do want a stock Silvia at one point or another for funsies. The whole thing goes together like a friggin’ dream, plus it all sits right at the end and doesn’t feel like the slightest nudge might make everything snap off. Though, the wheels are turnable and have this nasty habit of going crooked under their own weight a bit, but whatever man, small print I guess. If slightly on-the-piss wheels is what needs to happen for a kit that goes together this well to be able to exist, then so be it!
Okay, imagine this. It’s January 1979, the new Firebird Trans Am just a few months prior was beginning to hit the market with the updated front end and darkened out tail and celebrated its 10th anniversary with style. Two years before, Smokey and the Bandit lit the fire under the Firebird popularity and made it go stratospheric, effectively making the Firebird the “go-to” muscle car of the late seventies. However, in April of ’79 the second energy crisis crippled the United States once more and even stricter regulations had to be made to curb the giant usage of oil they no longer could import.
Promo kits were pretty damn popular throughout the fifties and sixties but as the seventies rolled around, the divide between promo kits and just, regular kits, was beginning to get really wide. Promo kits by this point were just there to be given to the car buyers, and at most if it weren’t for that, had a mail order at the dealership where you could order one of these kits for two or three bucks.
Then I came across this one on eBay, all wrapped up for damn near nothing. And I couldn’t resist, I thought at first it was a pre-built promo model that I could dismantle and give a proper model kit freshener, but then I held the box and it made the noise of a bunch of sprues sliding about in the box. That was the first pleasant surprise I got from this model kit. The second pleasant surprise lies with the nature of this kit…
Finished the whole thing up with some BF Goodrich Radial T/A tire decals, which sadly required me to cut off the very embossed Goodyear Polyglas GT tire letters off there to make space for ’em, though then I ran into issue numbero dos; the tires don’t actually fit the rims! So I luckily had some spare tires from a ’70 Mustang kit, a 1/24th scale kit and fitted the rims in there and lo and behold they fit exactly!
Buick always has stood far ahead in being a pioneer in performance, from the thirties on as the first to break 100MPH with a factory stock vehicle(the ’36 Century) and closing the muscle car chapter with a big, gargantuan bang in 1987 with the modified Buick Regal, the 
But back to the kit at hand here, Monogram first brought the wonderful Buick GSX to light in 1988 and it’s been largely unchanged since then. It’s seen a few re-releases here and there, split off into two distinct releases: the GSX in ’88 and again in 2012 and the “Street Machine” 2-in-1 release that got released in ’89, ’97 and ’07 which included a giant cut out in the hood with the engine sticking out and a set of custom wheels. Plus of course more decals, which is a given.
But I digress, the point I was apparently trying to avoid so damn well was that the color just… I loved it. To be fair, no muscle car looks bad in a coat of metallic blue, be it a light shade or a dark shade. But this one had this deep almost black undertone to it, only the metallic flakes seemed to reflect light and only by that you could tell it was in fact blue. So I took that paint job, made it a tad more blue cause otherwise, well, I may as well just make it black given the model stands inside 99% of the time. Then I bought myself a photo etched detail set for the 
But screw it, fine, it sits like a Californian wants it best; on the floor. The other? Well, the gorgeous(and I do mean, gorgeous) engine is kind of overshadowed by some fitting issues. The two tiny arms of the chassis are meant to take on the entire engine block, but the exhaust manifolds get stuck on the A-arm(or wishbone if you will) suspension and the oil pan gets wedged stuck in the chassis before the little arms can reach the supports.
In 2013 MPC re-released the 1975 Dodge Dart Sport kit from, well you guessed it, 1975 and it was welcomed with great, great… nothing. Okay, to be fair to the guys at Round 2, there’s always demand so to speak and for one I am grateful that they dragged the tool from the dusty depths and gave her another whirl. And with respect to ’em, they had released another few of ’em disguised as an AMT kit in 2003 as a police car, which was a 1976 release called “Smokey, the Convoy Chaser”(if only they knew in ’76 what popularity that phrase was gonna get just a year later thanks to Jerry Reed, Burt Reynolds and Jackie Gleason).
I mean, I appreciate the effort but boy did that fall flat. The edition sold but it didn’t even come near being a surfer icon, let alone a icon itself. Hell, the “Swinger” edition which I hope with my dumb, half innocent European mind, was of no relation to the giant ‘swinging'(wife-swapping woop woop) wave that dragged through the USA in the seventies, but boy did this sex mobile have absolutely no features to go wild about. The only mid seventies Dart I personally dig is, is also the one that the Dart kind of farted into the annals of history with: the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial edition, the Spirit of ’76.
So when I found out that Keith Marks has a set of both the 
Now obviously there’s some differences between this kit, the year and the Spirit of ’76 that I wanted to create. For instance, the engine is definitely not a Slant-6 but a 318 or a 340 V8 that was turned into a V6 by simply reducing the engine length and giving it V6 exhaust manifolds, hell none of the Darts during this period had a damn V6 besides the inline six Slant-6 engine… well, MPC wasn’t known for accuracy at the time under the hood. But other than the different engine, the 1975 Dart had a chrome center panel on the rear end, but ’76 Darts just have it being part of the sheet metal. But I made due with it, I actually prefer the look of the chrome on the tail, it’s kind of a shame they ditched it!
Hell, I won’t deny that with the sheer dinginess of the engine that I wanted to just epoxy the hood shut and hide the half-V8/V6 hybrid from hell but I figured, it would ruin the whole look and I did try to make the engine somewhat nice. The Volaré’s engine, while 100% the same, was cast a ton better with better plastic quality that actually had it fit somewhat okay. This? This is a frickin’ mess with parts cast too large due to old, old tooling. But I’m rambling on now, screw it. Either way, the not-Slant 6 is still there to behold no matter how badly I still wanna hide it all together.
