So this will be a short one, I reckon – SnapTite kits are a blast. That’s roughly the gist of it! Revell has done a lot of these types of little kits and generally they’ve been rather decent, especially if folks put in a lot of extra work on some of the lesser regions like the headlights/taillights, the interior, so forth. To name a few examples of Revell SnapTite kits that are beautifully done and are actually really, really solid kits even while they pack… only a handful of parts or so at best – the ’77 Monte Carlo, the ’70 Chevelle and what matters to this kit in general; the 2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor kit. It’s essentially the forerunner to this one, it was really neatly detailed, contained nice, clear parts, was actually kind of fun to put together and all in all made for one neatly detailed model by the end of it.
It’s been a few years since I built it though and lost the model along the way, but not before utterly annihilating it via crushing it under a big ol’ box. But it was honestly a great little kit, it reminds me of a full kit just without the glue. This kit on the other hand, is… not super great. I mean, it’s good but it’s literally half as good as the 2010 F-150 kit, and why? Well it’s simple, actually. The first big sinner is that everything is extremely simplified, the headlights already have a silver backing to it, the tail lights are no longer clear plastic, the whole interior is already assembled and so forth. I mean, it’s obviously a kit for the younger modeler or someone who doesn’t feel like turning their house into a glue sniffing den, but so were the other SnapTite kits.
But then again, we got a goddamn pickup truck kit in 2017. We got one. That’s basically all that matters. Back in the nineties, pick-up truck kits were everywhere, the Ford F-150s and Rangers, the Chevrolet S-10 and C-1500s, GMC Sierras, Syclones and Jimmys and so forth. They were everywhere and AMT as well as Revell were on their game back then, and prior to that MPC and AMT did just about every Ford, Dodge, GMC and Chevy truck for every year. Since the early 2000s, we’ve slowed down to a crawl and across the 2010s we’ve gotten literally around three modern ones, all in all. The wonderful 2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor, the MENG ’09 F-350 Super Duty and well, this one. And it’s weird that we’ve gotten so few of them, given the pick-up popularity in the real world has gotten quite insane as of late.
I’m fairly sure I’m not alone in this one, there’s obvious interest from the consumer to buy those kits up something fierce, as per the MENG kit, there’s some serious desire and love to see a new Dodge Ram kit or a regular F-150 kit, or maybe a Chevy Silverado at last after all this time again. The old kits of the nineties were also supremely detailed, the Chevrolet S-10 kit was absolutely delightful and the GMC Sonoma was just as detailed, full engine, detailed interior, tons of extra parts, nice decals, so forth. The only full detail kit of a 2009-2019 truck is the ’09 F-350 for as far as I know. But here I am lamenting a bunch of paragraphs on how I wish there were more, but more on the kit, here we go.
In contrast to the unfortunately not clear-cast rear lights and not-silver backed headlights, the pre-painted body is absolutely wonderful. It’s reminding me of those AMT ProShop kits where it’s stamped on the body, which shows a slight of a faded edge but it still makes for a very clean painted body. The rest is all single color cast plastic, all in a matte black besides the wheels, which are semi-gloss. The tires are also another giant, giant plus to this kit, nice and thick proper off-road tires that sit on the axles flawlessly. The only thing this kit could’ve used, y’know, other than some more loose parts to make the painting process easier, is decals. The “RAPTOR” decal is stamped onto the side of the body, for the rest there’s no decals at all – no little metal transfers for the mirrors, no dashboard, nothing. Again, it’s made for younger modelers and for those seeking a neat low effort kit.
So I made a little decal sheet for the kit to at least try and improve the model a bit, at the very least give it some reasonable looking head and tail-lights as those bugged me to no end, it’s still not as close to the real deal as I’d like it to be but it’s as close as I can get. Also, some incredibly basic red metallic paint to cover the body up. I liked the red but it looked somewhat dull, plus the interior color bleeds through the red plastic quite badly so I figured at least this way it’s somewhat less blotchy looking. My taping-off skills are nice and shit as per usual, but still – it looks alright! Now I’ve had this one sitting around for a while I’ve had the desire to purchase one of those 2010 F-150s again and see how it holds up against this bad boy. It’s just a very nice little rut-breaker of a kit, if you can get one on the cheap.
’17 Ford F-150 Raptor specifications:
Kit: #85-1985
Skill Level: 1
Parts: 18
Molded in: Red
Scale: 1/25
In the article for the 
By 1975 the Mustang II was slowly growing back into its old self(despite its most successful sales coming from the bare bones Mustangs), getting the 302 V8 back, albeit at an absolutely anemic horsepower output. And in 1976, the first of the so called “Decal GT” cars began appearing. Being largely unchanged from the normal Mustang bar for some appearance stuff, the Cobra II was literally the least sporty “sports” car out there. It was basically the car equivalent of a overweight fellow in a velour jumpsuit. Don’t get me wrong though, I’d argue its the prettiest of that generation Mustangs, cause holy shit they went all in with the 1978 Mustang II King Cobra and it became a hideous amalgamation of body kit, stripes and stencils, shopping cart wheels and the amount of cobra bite equal of what you’d find in a plush toy. That being said though, I find it amazing nonetheless and am doing a decal sheet for it as we speak, but I digress!
But enough lamenting on the Mustang II’s existence. Back to the comparison, the AMT and MPC bodies are different. Very different. First of all, the AMT one is definitely the one pulling the short stick, it has deep sinks on several parts of the body, the assembly is nowhere near MPC’s and in the end, the whole interior was a silly afterthought to them, being flat and un-detailed to say the least. The shape is also… worse? I dunno, it’s in the eye of the beholder but I’d argue at least on the tail end and the grille especially the AMT one is far less accurate than MPC’s offering. The biggest sinner remains to be the wheel size on the AMT kit, which is hilarious to say the least. Engine-wise again it goes to AMT for having the worse of the two, though but no means a lot – the V6 engines offered in either kit are actually really neat, and it’s the V6 offerings that usually go completely unloved so its nice to see two nicer castings out there.
So, the biggest issue I had with this kit was the tires. They, much like everything back then, were just tossed in the box. Even though they were sort of rubberized and really, really nice for the time, they also had a horrible habit of melting into the plastic over the many years they’d lie untouched. Mine decided to mate with the windshield, rear glass and part of one of the seats and took some digging to get loose from those parts, so unfortunately I had no tires for this model. I did however have access to a nice little Ford Pinto kit with the mag wheels that were actually on a proper ’76 Cobra II! So I stole those tires and wheels and slapped ’em on there no problemo and of course, they were one-size-fits-all so they went on with hardly a bit of hassle. Put on the set of Firestone Firehawk SS decals I had prepared for ’em and done!
Oh boy, oh boy, I finally got one. A second generation Ford Mustang kit, and not just any of them, the friggin’ AMT release. The Mustang II fascinates me to no end, for all the wrong reasons – lemme just get my sins out of the way. I like it for several reasons, one’s obviously the story behind the absolute US automotive disaster the Mustang II became to symbolize, the second is that I, and fuck me for saying this, kind of dig the way it looked, especially the more European styled Mustang II Ghia and third; where it ended up going. Cause the Mustang is basically the Elvis of the automotive industry, it came in and it essentially changed the whole game there and then in 1964. Then as it became to define success, by 1969, it started packing on some… weight.
Obviously, something had to be done and Iacocca definitely nailed it on the head when he noted that the Mustang had to be downsized to ever stand a chance at living on, cause it didn’t just define the muscle car era, it also defined the horrible side of perpetual growth in the muscle car market. James May and his Detroit-oriented interviewees said it best in a episode of 
In a way, the Mustang II might have been the best thing to have happened to the entire Mustang lineage. I know, hot take there Mr. Grumpyfuck, why don’t you go and worship some more European scrap, you cretin. And I’d say, you’d be right, I am that but still – look at the fox body Mustang that followed it in ’79. It was compact-ish, it was quick, it maintained the awesome hatchback design for most of its models, it was a nippy, lightweight… fox! And by some ways I like to imagine that the Mustang II’s downsizing helped that vision be realized, cause while the Camaro, Firebird and other muscle car survivors maintained their livelihoods, they stayed quite… large. Lengthy, at the least.
The body has fitting issues, there’s a sunken part on the tailgate right where the Ford lettering is, the mold lines are obscene, the hood nor the hatch will fit at all, the clear pieces slot in from the bottom, giving the illusion that the damn windows sit deep as hell and looks like someone glued plastic sheets in from the inside to cover the fact that the car came with no windows. The rims inside the stupidly huge wheels are also too damn big, the tail lights are unfortunately just chrome pieces, the whole chassis is just a flat plate and the suspension is absolutely huge and so weirdly shaped compared to the flat chassis, the interior is smooshed flat in a odd manner and just looks… wrong. The engine is a nice one though, goes together smoothly and the underappreciated 250ci/4.0L V6 is nicely detailed and it is one of the few quite well cast V6’s too.
And y’know what, in the end, who the hell cares right, with some effort and part sourcing, something I definitely didn’t get around to, you could quite handily turn this into a much better model than the box initially offers. Smaller tires aren’t otherworldly to come across, some wing mirrors aren’t too difficult to find spares of, the decals I’ve got for sale now so there’s those and you could do some chisel-work to the hood and tailgate to get ’em to shut properly. I love, absolutely love these misery cars from the seventies, for the lessons that were learned, for the slowly-growing appreciation for the Mustang II, for the overall perspective one gains looking into these things, from both the modeler’s side of things as well as the actual car, and how it held up opposed to other competitors at the time, now that we live in a facts-found-in-seconds world… Speaking of competitors, the next build I’m currently actively messing about with is the ’77 Toyota Celica LB-2000GT – Basically its Japanese cousin. Oh yes, oh yes indeed.
One can say I’m on a bit of a pick-up streak as of late, starting with the I-wish-I-was-a-pickup 
2), it’s a super well thought out kit. Like, raise the bar some more why dontcha, MENG. Really, even Tamiya has hit a ceiling quality-wise and it’s still under what MENG has pulled out of their sleeves. The tooling is superb, it’s crisp, the planning is brilliant so that everything connects beautifully and best of all? Structurally sound. Once it fits, it sits. And lastly, 3), it’s riddled with detail. The engine bay is honestly the closest thing I’ve seen compared to the real stuff on any kit, the interior is crisp and done in such a manner that from a-far you couldn’t tell the difference, not until you see that none of the knobs have icons, the lines, the door handles, the little simulated light bulbs in the headlights, it’s all there and it’s all done perfectly.
Though recently, and I don’t say this begrudgingly or anything, the pick-ups of GM and Ford have gotten… chunky. They weren’t ever the slim, nippy little trucks, oh no. Thats why we have the Ford Ranger and Chevrolet Colorado, the so called “compact trucks”, or under a tonne in weight, and to an extend the Dodge Ram but even at their respective sizes, the compact pick-up of the olden days is long gone. The Ranger is still mostly car with a bed attached but look at the smallest F-series, the F-150 and Jesus Christ that thing is frickin’ giant. They’re very imposing, like miniature Mack trucks with a giant, high slanted grille-hood, high seating compartment and just a ton of metal in between you and the world. But I’m just rambling on about unrelated stuff here, the article is about a train of a pick-up truck that also somehow can double as a nimble off-roader if the situation requires it so.
But you know what, screw it. While raggedy-ass, it looks pretty damn good still. Though I should point out a few more flaws, for one the connecting of the body to the frame is impossible due to the nature of the interior bucket and the windows, there was some trimming required to make it all meet and I didn’t know of this until long after I glued the damn things in place. The second thing is, the front bumper droops down and is already too low as it is. There’s also some missing bits that kind of stand out due to the immense detail, like there’s no steering box or the front suspension is missing the track bar, or that the decals incorrectly show “6.8L Triton V10” on the fender emblems instead of “6.4L Powerstroke V8“, that sort of stuff. I don’t particularly care though, as this kit is such a masterpiece despite that the flaws are just at worst some annoyances.
By the late sixties, the definitive muscle car was the Mustang. It invented the term “pony car”; long hood, big engine, short rear and low price. And by 1968 every single large car manufacturer had a variety of the pony car. GM by then had the Firebird, Camaro and Barracuda, Ford re-invented it by going deeper with the Mustang(fastback and coupe) and let Mercury in on the fun with the Cougar and AMC came with the Javelin. Late entries to the fun were Chrysler with the Challenger and the updated ‘Cuda in 1970.
And kit manufacturers have been really generous with the original muscle car. Every single generation’s had every single edition covered, some better than others. Monogram brought out the 1970 Mustang kit way back in 1981 and has since been improving upon it. It’s been re-released around twelve times since, every time in a different jacket; some were the Boss 302, some were the Boss 429, some were both, hell some even came as the famous Mach 1 and in 2007 Revell released them in the same box under their excellent “Special Edition” line. Which comes down to the mold being a lot more crisp and more detailed, a much much better decal sheet and of course having all the bits to go fully one way or the other.
The legendary 5.0L engine that Ford Mustangs are still asciociated with to this day, the 302, is replicated fantastically. Down to the little Ford emblems on the rocker covers, the little breathers on them, so on. The decals help, a lot. But it helps that Revell put effort into making it crisp, just like the Charger engine molds, these will look good for a long, long time to come, though sadly its 1/24th scale likely means the engine won’t see a lot of use cross-kits from here on out. But still, it’s a fantastically molded engine block. The “custom” bits, like the so called “Cross Boss” intake manifold(fantastic Trans-Am goodie made by Autolite back in 1969, rarely if ever seen on a stock 302), is fantastically done for this kit and is a nice legacy piece.
Revell has made a few “annual” kits in the early nineties with some Ford and Mercury cars, like the Thunderbird and Cougar in specific. From ’89 through ’93, each year they put out a updated version of the model kit. In 1992 they put out the original which this kit was based on, a simple Thunderbird SC with the typical 2-in-1 treatment with a gargantuan body kit, no spoiler and a second set of wheels, oh and some extra decals for good measure.
I mean, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and all that, but whose brilliant idea was it to give the “sport” version Thunderbird logo dish wheels? On top of that, I wouldn’t say the default OEM T-Bird wheels are by any means pretty and it’s amusing to know that the supposedly sporty T-Bird had a bunch of hideous tear-drop hole wheels, but would it have killed someone to add some five spoke wheels, even a direct steal of the Mercury kit? I won’t go into depth about the lowrider even though the kit’s package shows it so proudly, but I’ll say the kit’s entirely the same besides the decals and color choices for the most part. And of course, the wheels. I wanted to attach some Pegasus wheels, which wouldn’t fit and as a second plan I had the 1994 Impala SS wheels ready and set, but the wheels were too wide to even come close to matching the body.
Other than that it shows the shared roots with the 
But what the hell, it all came together in the end! Another ever-so-forgotten tried-so-hard-but-got-nowhere early nineties car finished. I do really quite collecting these types of kits of cars that were meant to be so much more than they were and building them gives me a nice glimpse in what Ford had going on at the time. It’s a shame both the Cougar and Thunderbird are now just near forgotten vehicles of a near forgotten time.
Revell’s been making quite the living off making model kits of “famous” movie cars. Most of the tuner cars from Fast and the Furious, like the Acura, the Mitsubishi, so forth, then of course also the ’69 Yenko Camaro and the ’70 Dodge Charger. The ’68 Mustang Fastback and the ’68 Dodge Charger from Bullitt, as well as the “retro-inspired” special version of the ’08 Mustang GT.
sense they made building it a bit easier cause you won’t need to paint a fair amount, though as always it’s molded in semi-gloss so the paint looks more dirty than anything and you’ll end up clear coating it anyway.
The gist of the model I suppose is that it’s nice and very, very approachable. Folks would consider this a “get back in” kit, something with a very decent result with fairly little effort. It’s a great model kit to get back into the hobby again, it hasn’t got a ton of parts, they’re all already pre-painted so all you really have to do is either build it and have a nice curbside model or paint some of the trays so you get a very decent middle-of-the-ground model kit that looks really good in the end.
visible. Albeit all in one color, it does has some decals complimenting the interior detail, like the wood on the dash and glovebox as well as all the lock cylinders.
This is one of those great kits that come up from Revell’s headquarters every now and again. The kinda kit that’s extra packed with options, extra detailed and in the end truly comes together like a showroom replica of the car itself. It’s a more difficult skill 3(or as it’s nowadays known: 5), packs more parts and comes this much closer to being the real deal, just smaller.
whole package. The only thing about this whole kit I didn’t like is the stock wheels the LX 5.0 comes with.
will do just fine. The interior detail is really, really strong too. Stronger in the CHP version obviously due to the extra little bits, but even then, with some paintwork it looks borderline real. It’s got a bit of a weird mount for the arm-rest but that’s just me being a nitpicker.
Revell’s made a bunch of Torino’s before and have made a couple since, the ’69 Torino Talladega, the ’70 Torino Cobra, the ’76 Starsky & Hutch Torino and then there’s this one.
