And now for another Camaro, why yes indeed! The better of the two Camaro kits(for now), with a crisper mold and arguably a better overall image in the model car kit community. I was holding this one up against the Camaro Z/28 the whole way through that particular article and knowing that I’ve had this kit for a year plus now and it just… sat there, it really could do with being built. The whole reason I initially bought it was to do the decal sheet for it and do it properly. As well as of course do the split-stripe Baldwin Motion 454 Camaro for the 1971 year. And uh… many more.
Regardless, it sat collecting dust under a table after I scanned in and photographed the body plenty enough. Then, long after I stowed it away, Round 2 proudly announced the re-tooling of the Camaro kit and finally give us a damn full bumper, single headlight Camaro. The first one since 1973, can you believe that? In an age of re-releases where every odd month a tool from 1967 is dug up to be used up after so long, it’s truly peculiar to see one of the best selling muscle cars of all time fall by the way side.
But, I hear you say, but Mr. Writer Man, that is because they took the tool for the full bumper kit behind the shed and let it closely examine the rifling of the Remington rifle that got shoved in its eyes – and you’re right! They executed the full bumper tool and re purposed its empty chest cavity for the double headlight split bumper in the eighties, combining this amalgamation of half-MPC guts, half-AMT guts into one gargantuan misshapen, ugly, terrible mess. Also side note, I know the term should be “twin headlight” and “quad headlight” rather than single and twin, but I’m a fool so bear with me.
Either way, it’s finally happening and in celebration thereof I’m revisiting my, what, third and fourth models respectively? I never did write an article about the Baldwin Motion and the Z/28 article was uh, a thing. So I thought its time to use my tricks that I learned over the years and put them to use with a little elbow grease and actually try to make something nice out of them for once. For the Z/28 350, I went with the dark gray I at first wanted to do this one in but then it occurred to me, all of the Baldwin Motion cars are abrasively out there; they don’t do subtle. The green is honestly the darkest shade you could get the damn thing in, so I swapped the colors out – popping metallic blue under the black rear, why yes, yes indeed.
Baldwin Motion is one of those four or five big names from the 1960s-going-on-1970s that really latched onto GM’s “COPO” program. They’re all dealers from across the United States, all dealt in GM products and they all fell in love with the Camaro, Chevelle, Corvette and Nova the most. Dana Chevrolet out of Long Beach, CA was the first to transplant the 427ci V8 out of the ‘Vette into the Camaro and that’s where the whole idea of dealers making subtle sleepers came from; the Dana hood for instance is just a simple twin-snorkel hood that on the outside doesn’t really scream “437HP car”. Then you had Nickey Chevrolet out in Chicago, IL where it became quite literally a customization shop to the customer’s taste. But you also had the now ever so famous Yenko, ran by Don Yenko out of Cannonsburg, PA and just like Nickey, just like Dana, Yenko too was a racing car driver with a dealership that just didn’t get enough power out of the supposed ‘powerful’ cars, so he just like the rest, began to offer suped-up versions; namely the Yenko S/C or sYc; the Yenko Super Car. And honestly, I can go on all day and not even remotely do those people’s backgrounds justice, they’re all enigmatic and engineering masterminds who turned the muscle car, into a beefcake car.
I didn’t even mention the elephant in the room in that little background wade there; Baldwin Motion. Joel Rosen, a racing car driver and engine builder out of Brooklyn joined Baldwin Chevrolet out of well, Baldwin in New York and even before the Baldwin days, Rosen was known for making supremely, over the top, outrageously fast engines that would set a dyno on fire. In 1966 when he joined Baldwin, they began to offer specialty tuned packages on just about any Chevrolet on the lot if the customer so desired. And from these, we get the wide-as-hell selection of everything. The whole point was to create a car that was fast as balls on the road and could be not-at-all compromised on the track still. It had road-going comforts and for the most part it was the customer who chose if the luxury had to go for more speed(weight v.s. power back then was… well, with 3500 pound cars, no-one gave a shit if you had the top of the line luxury added atop of the minivan sized engine), and Rosen made it so that even fully equipped, that car could dominate. Even going as far as to call his cars “super cars”. And you know what, they were. And in 1967, when the all-new Camaro came to the public, those dealers had a damn field day.
The funny thing is, a 1967 ad for the ’67 Phase III Motion Camaro called out exactly what I just described. Quite literally saying it’s not a sports car, drag car or a family car, yet somehow, still being exactly all of them. Considering they threaded the line of being called a jack of all trades and a master of none, they kind of pulled it off – being exactly a jack of all trades and a master of all nonetheless. It wasn’t until 1968 when the crazy sticker packages started to take off, with the 1968 Phase III having a quite lively stripe set that got further expanded on in 1969(Rosen gone on record saying there’s no Phase I or II, “Phase III” just sounds cool). But lets be fair, it got… it got conkers in 1970. Fresh of the line in mid-1970, the Camaro got a kick up something fierce; a freshly developed 1970 LS6 454 cubic inch V8 sourced once again from the Corvette which was now also offered into the other models by default would make it into the Camaro which at the time didn’t actually get a block bigger than the 396ci V8 and torque-monster 400ci V8 by default.
And those 454’s… they were huge. They really packed a considerable punch and they were really popular among the dealership cars, right up there with the Yenkos. Though unfortunately, Baldwin Motion was also kind of responsible along with Yenko for bringing the custom dealership car to a painful halt in 1973. Yenko abruptly backed out the EPA testing of his ’72 Vega Stinger with the 4 cylinder cranked up to max via turbocharger cause they required 50000 miles to be driven in one before it was allowed to pass. He did eventually push out the already tested Stinger Vegas without the turbo, but this was quite literally the last Yenko Super Car model that left their shop. And Baldwin Motion ran into a totally different issue, albeit with the same agency and the same damn model: The Motion Super Vega.
A 454 powered modified(pretty much only in the suspension, tire and engine housing compartment) that got Joel Rosen a cease-and-desist letter from the EPA in 1974 after being featured in Car Craft magazine, and they quite literally demanded that if they didn’t stop putting non-factory options onto any car, they would be given a 10,000$ fine per removed emission device. This was 1974 money, in 2019 money this is 51,000$ per Vega. That’s a staggering, ungodly high penalty. So… he ceased doing exactly that by settling a 500$ fine in 1975 and promising to no longer continue it for on the road vehicles, from then on he marked every car as ‘export only’ and ‘for off-road use only’. From there on out, Motion kind of faded into the background, though it still exists today, go figure!
And that right there was a six paragraph history lesson on dealer-tuned cars and how… they all went away. Besides Yenko. And technically Hurst. And kind of Motion Performance. Oh fuck it. Anyway! One more thing of interest about Joel Rosen is that in the nineties, he was by this point a massive, avid model enthusiast. Like, of any type: prop planes, tanks, military planes, boats, military ships, it goes on and one thing of considerable import to us car model kit folks: he joined Ertl and Racing Champions back then to help put out the Baldwin Motion Camaro, ensuring its high grade quality with the Motion Performance name. It’s claimed(though I myself can’t verify it) he was also part of Revell’s undertaking of the 1969 Baldwin Motion Camaro around the same time.
Like I kept rambling on about in the Z/28 350 article, this kit’s… the better one. In terms of mold quality, it’s leaps and bounds ahead, even though they come from the same damn source. The hood isn’t warped and torn to shreds due to crappy plastic quality and stupendously idiotic injector point placement, where you can actually hide the injection part, it’s got clearer details on most the parts cause they’re not soft blobs in the same of car related parts, the front end is… less crappy, which on the Z/28 kit is damn near flat due to the quality of the plastic but on the Baldwin Motion kit is actually kind of reasonable. That being said though, this kit desperately, like to a disturbing degree, separate headlight buckets. It’s awful. There’s no adequate way of describing how much better it would be if they could’ve been separate. Now you have to squeeze 4 transparent headlight pieces into the body and because of the way the body is molded, they don’t fit. They awkwardly get forced in there and they don’t really ever seem to look… right.
Another problem that is unique to this kit is, and you might’ve spotted in the pictures, is the damn knuckle-dragger stance. There’s no way, no real way of knowing how low your exhausts will be. They should never have made it so the exhaust headers are one piece down to the chassis and have the rest of the exhaust pipes be a separate piece. Instead, a fix would’ve been quite simple: have the exhaust pipes with the headers, you know, the visible piece outside the car, be met halfway in the engine, where they’re covered by the engine block and engine bay, so even if you dicked it up, it’ll be hidden from view. The way they have it now is that the engine, with the headers, will be glued and stuck, incapable to be adjusted, days ahead of placing the exhausts. I mean for Gods sake… it’s pretty, pretty damn bad.
On the flip side, however! This is the better version, it’s got a far more detailed engine bay, the quality is leaps ahead of the oddly enough exact same version just with different sprues, it has better tires and it has a better decal sheet. So, what did I do to it to make it more unique? Well for starters, only the stripes are used from the kit and I painted them gloss black with Tamiya blacks. The rest are my own decals, even though I screwed up the placement of the tail ones: the left one should’ve been a SS emblem and the Baldwin Motion badge above it, with the 454 emblem on the right, but instead I just put more Motion decals. The engine bay is fully wired, plumbed and decal’d up the wazoo – and holy shit does the air cleaner look good with the decal, I’m so pleasantly surprised by it.
The body is painted with Tamiya’s TS-54 “Light Metallic Blue” with their clear over it and it’s the first time I’ve used their simple glossy clear and it’s actually supremely nice to use. It dries in a instant, it’s no wet look but it’s precisely what it says on the cap: glossy. Plus, it’s a decal’s best pal. It’s not gonna curl ’em, cause them to rip on the body, so forth, it actually seals them in perfectly. Another little home-addition I did, first time for anything – hood latches. I used some stray wire strands I yanked from the wires I’m using in the engine bay and painted ’em silver, leaving them to dry. Then I forced them in with the grille piece which forced them stuck perfectly and drilled holes in the hood latches. In the end, I gotta say, it’s quite a nice little finishing touch.
Like, all in all – definitely one of my better efforts I’d say. It joins the other Camaro, the Z/28 on the shelf and a little vacant spot’s gonna stay until the full bumper Camaro sees itself being shoved onto hobby store shelves. Until then, it’s gonna be finishing up the 1977 Firebird T/A S.E. and 1977 Pinto Special Accent Group – good time for ’77!
’70 Chevrolet Camaro SS Baldwin Motion 454 Phase III specifications:
Kit: AMT855
Skill Level: 2
Parts: 159
Molded in: Dark Green
Scale: 1/25
Ahh yes, one of my first model kits that I built when I jumped back into this particular hobby. Heck, in fact, this particular kit might also be one of the first posts I did on this website, copying it like the ham fisted oaf that I am from a crappy Amazon.co.uk review. Well, we’re now a rigorous 300 or so models further into the future, it’s time to give this ol’ boy a re-do. Why? Honestly, there’s no big ‘true‘ reason, part of me was inspired by the anouncement of AMT’s semi-new tool 1970 Camaro with the full bumper and single headlights. Holy shit right? It only took them 30 years to finally do something with this kit. Though one shouldn’t bite the cramped, over-reaching hand that feeds him, this is a truth, it’s not AMT’s fault, it’s… well, it’s Round 2’s fault. A company that quite literally just invests in shoving more liquid plastic through old molds so they can make more AutoWorld 1/18th scale cars and be hugged by Coca-Cola Company for being good boys.
Yet part of that is to blame on the kit itself, but I’ll go further into that in a moment. First, some well deserved history on the car and the kit; you see, this is like one of those cars that you really gotta give credit. Think of the Mustang, back in 1965 when they put out the Fastback alongside the convertible and coupe, that right there was serious concern for magnum opus. How the in the ever living fuck were they gonna triumph that? They essentially had designed the greatest hits album right there and then, and of course Caroll Shelby came along and for ’67 he essentially made the sexiest automobile in the history of mankind, better known as the 1967 Shelby GT500, not even the Eleanor version that added too much square to an all around slab of perfect. What the hell are you gonna do next? 1968 was largely unchanged and 1969 came along and it just went straight into Elvis territory from there, getting fatter and heavier until Ford had to damn near scrap it in 1973.
However, it was fortunately also a car to which GM for once in their lifetime actually listened to the consumers. The Camaro was popular in all configurations, as a two door family car all the way to Trans-Am racer. One of the biggest complaints from the first generation was the ride quality, it was lumpy, it was bumpy and generally it was a blast to drive as long as you went straight on a smooth road. They really took to the mantra of “the driver’s car”; they put on far better suspension, revamped the brakes, soundproofed the car and also did little comforts like longer doors for easier rear bench entry, more powerful steering, you name it. Essentially, while it was chunkier, it was also better. And it was still fast as all hell being a true to itself muscle car, until the 1973 oil crisis you had the base 290ci V6 but most customers chose the revamped 350ci V8 LT-1 engine sourced from the Corvette that would become a staple for the Camaro until deep into the eighties. The power monster 396ci V8 would be available until 1973 before it would get chopped in favor of… well, less.
And the AMT kit also had its fair share of troubles, yes nice segue I know. From the seventies, AMT did the 1970, 1971 and 1972 all in the single headlight SS specs with the 396ci V8 engine. These were uh, well, they weren’t great. But ’twas 1970 and choice was rather limited and so was technology so lets forgive them for that. Then, in 1989 they did the impossible – they somehow fudged together the AMT and MPC kits from 1970 into one ugly abomination of ill-fitting shit that honestly didn’t deserve to see the light of day. It truly was every way a terrible kit, screwballed into a kit and you know it was a crapfest of a kit when not even the re-release kings Ertl, Racing Champions and Round 2 gave this one a second run. Instead, during the Racing Champions era of AMT Ertl, they invested in a ground up new tool of the 1970 Camaro in 1999, specifically the Baldwin Motion 454 Camaro in all new-tool glory. Even at the time specifically designed with the future in mind, the RS Z/28 Camaro hit the shelves in 2001.
The hood is molded onto the sprue from the left side all the way down and cause the plastic is so thin and flimsy it curves upwards horribly. The entire detail of the suspension and small pieces like the springs and shocks are just blobs. Hell the only thing to look somewhat decent are the A-arms, the rest is chunky and just decked with flash. Like an ungodly amount. And the worst part, I’d argue, is the front end of the body. The headlights are just ruined by flash, you need some surgical skills to reduce it to a reasonable amount and even then the thin, crappy plastic has shown its mark once again. The headlights are arguably the worst casualty of the plastic quality. For the rest however, it isn’t too bad. One can say though that this kit desperately could use more chrome pieces. They only chromed the two bumperettes, the grille, the rear bumper and the stick shift. Thats it. The wheels, for one, really could’ve used the chrome treatment, heck it could’ve used a rear-view mirror too. Maybe some headlight buckets instead of the molded on ones. Here’s hoping the full bumper Z/28 does see some separate headlight buckets. And some wheel support as there, well, isn’t any. They just loosely hang from the axles and eventually they go crooked… again. I kinda gave up on resetting the stance so the rear tires no cave in a tiny bit, I’m thinking “what the hell ever” by this point.
So while I’m at it, I’m giving this decal sheet a do-over purely became it needs one and it lacks a bunch of stuff so, keep an eye out for that one to join the Baldwin Motion decal set I’ve made a while before. And here I am now, approaching the end of this article with one hell of a muscle car to show for it even with all the troubles and problems that plague the kit. Cause that’s really where it stands, despite everything crap, terrible and horrible about this kit, it still is quite… grand. The mold must’ve gone to hell over the years and frankly the build quality isn’t terrible. It’s nowhere near the ’69 Camaro from Revell in terms of how nice it all goes together and the crispness of the detail, but it’s damn well up there.
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.
Oh Jesus H. Christ, what have I gotten myself into. Recently I bought a ’77 Pacer X kit from MPC, at the time of purchasing not quite realizing just how unbelievably freaking lucky I had been getting it in the first place, let alone brand new for next to nothing. So what did I decide to do immediately? I bought the 1974 AMC Gremlin X kit from AMT Ertl. When I built up the Pacer, it kind of struck me that the kit unlike any of MPC’s schlock from the 1970s… it was good. It was really, really good, in fact. So I had laid my expectations somewhat higher than “it’ll be that non-detail-shitfest that AMT and MPC did from 1971 through 1983.” – y’know, as low as bars go, that’s… I mean, it’s a promotion.
The things that the Gremlin did right was making standard options small and affordable(yet also kept bigger engines and trim options on the sheet), as the economy shat itself and the oil embargos were dished out. It also looked less alien and odd than some would’ve expected, especially knowing the Pacer was around the corner and the styling was soon made normal by things like the Pinto, Vega, Chevette and so on. It was also, unlike many of its vehicle brethren, quite solidly built. It didn’t rust quite as easily, it didn’t fall to bits after ten thousand miles, the engines were low maintenance and often crossplatform so if it did need maintenance, parts were plenty. The smaller V6s that were on offer were also really fuel efficient, especially during those days.
If only the AMT Ertl kit was on a similar level… which it isn’t. You see, the 1970s for AMT and MPC were simply put; quotas. Get the new Gremlin on the market, get the new Camaro on the market, get the new dealership promos out the door, get that Dodge Fury promo, who gives a flying ratsass about detail or even getting a reasonable kit out there, just get it out. And in a way, this allowed for market saturation which now is sort of beneficial in the way that there’s 1970s promos literally everywhere you look but this also allowed for AMT Ertl and MPC to lower the bar so damn low that 
What is bad, though, is how unbelievably half-assed this kit is. Normally I wouldn’t call out the “exaggerated” pictures and drawings on the side of a kit cause they’re always prettier than anything most of us can make. However, this time I can and I am – it’s a fucking lie. For instance, the seats on the side are what they would’ve looked like… 
The mid to late sixties were a period of aggressive advances and what one could call a sort of coming of age. The fifties had the United States booming left, right and center with opulence, slapping chrome on every inch of the house, fancy leather and bright colors everywhere, music getting wilder and wilder, cinema getting better and better, the golden age of TV kicked off and the cars, while they don’t really appeal to me, but late fifties is Americana to its Miss Belvedere burying heart. And as the sixties came around, the United States began living less like the wild party apartment and honed in on all of its specific parts and began improving on ’em something fierce, in most cases for better, in some for worse.
And what came out of it is in my opinion, arguably one of the prettiest muscle cars ever designed. Ford had it be designed as such that it would eye more European to the American customers, with more ‘alien’ design cues to things like the giant “electric razor” grille and the sharp fender angles. How it looks more European is way the balls beyond me as a European but I suppose its nicer to say its “European” instead of “less bulbous than what we’re used to“. It was twinned to the Mustang from its inception to about 1973 when Mercury was turning their entire lineup into luxury cars, which was, y’know, fair point, the Cougar was a luxurious pony car that could be optioned to be a roaring beast with bare bones everything else but deep down it was… well, luxurious. But never mind its ill fated thirty year voyage beyond muscle car kingdom, the 1967 and 1968 were prime years for the cars and while 
So right away upon seeing the kit in my hands, two thoughts entered my mind. One; holy shit detail is crisp, what the hell kind of magic did they use in 1968 and why can’t AMT Ertl even reach similar heights in friggin’ 2018. Two; 
The other problem is that back in those times, they shoved the whole kit in one plastic bag. This nowadays isn’t done anymore for one simple reason; it wrecked the damn kit. Parts interconnected, the tires can rot and melt to a piece and be conjoined forever. And last but not least, the thing that happened to this kit; the clear piece got scratched to high heaven in the baggie. But whatever, time and decay go hand in hand. At the end of it all, the kit went together so unbelievably well, even with the whole replacement engine in mind. Keith Marks’ decals topped off an incredible package and was worth every penny, not to mention it really brings the detail out, especially on the grille.
AMT’s the proud license owner of the latest Camaro molds and tools, as of 2016 they’ve been responsible for getting the newest Camaro models to the market in all shapes and forms, some are full kits, few others are pre-painted snap-tite kits, but in general they’ve all been quite remarkably nice kits with supremely detailed suspension and interior parts. That’s pretty much the gist of it. Last year it was the 
That’s great and all and honestly, it’s a good feeling that manufacturers listen to their customers to some extend, however, boy oh boy this is one cheap-as-shit kit. You see, the wheels are quality additions, they’re accurate, they’re solid, the tires are good rubber but oh man did they take cheap shortcuts on just about everything else. Again, it’s got the same pre-detailed glass and pre-colored tail lights, which is also amazing and I’m happy that they’re a thing but… I cannot stress the point enough that they literally cut corners on everything else. Though to go back to the tail lights, while it’s supremely nice that they’re pre-detailed, they also look somewhat… odd. It’s possible because you can see into the red through the clear, making it look “soft” on the inside, I would argue it would’ve been a thousand times better if the reverse/indicator lights were separate(think Tamiya’s Nissan Skyline R34, with separate lenses for the inner and outer lights).
So I kind of went in with a semi-defeated attitude, having come to terms with the trade-offs with the quality, to just build it and have one last kit finished before the turn of the year into 2018. I mean, despite the rough body, cheap-ass quality plastic and shortcomings in total, it’s still mostly the epic new tool from AMT from 2016. Like I said, the suspension build on this kit is nothing short of legendary, it’s well over forty parts for the rear suspension alone(and weirdly enough, just 8 or so for the front) and while most modern cars sadly hide their engines under some synthetic engine cover, AMT Ertl’s tried to maximize the detail under the hood despite it all. The 6.2L LT1 V8(shared with a Corvette these days!) is detailed supremely well and the whole engine bay just… looks good. I mean, for the sake of modeling, nothing beats the raw engine bay of a late sixties/early seventies engine block but, y’know, given how well engines are hidden under plastic these days, they did pretty good on that part.
For a last 2017 build, it was semi disappointing. I mean, it’s still a perfectly fine kit but given the standards they achieved in 2016 with this kit, it’s odd to see them take the cheap-as-chips plastic route with the weird half-metallic half translucent yellow paint and sprues with so much flash on them that you spend a third of the time chipping bits of plastic of the parts so they frickin’ fit. I mean, Monogram nailed the process in 1983 for Christs sake, it shouldn’t be so hard to get a decent quality plastic for your kits. But ah well, it’s just all that, still a fine kit all in all.
Remember GM’s 
Anyway, to move on from that interesting piece o’ history. It was a nice, popular little car that wasn’t all bad. In fact, from the heydays of yore, it was arguably one of the better ones around. It quickly got a reputation as a “high-schooler’s car”, which was… fair, I suppose. Designed by the same folks responsible for the 1983 Camaro and Corvette updates, it looked sporty and it was a comfortable little 2 door with a simple, front wheel drive and nice quaint little inline four engine that got enough power to do the littlest burnouts with but it also came with comfort and safety for the most part. I mean, it was definitely, one hundred percent, GM’s first true success with a front wheel drive car. Well, since the X-platform program at least. And no counting the ’66 Oldsmobile Toronado, that thing may have been FWD, but frickin’ look at it. But the success carried on and soon GM introduced the Corsica half a year after the two-door Beretta, effectively covering the whole market’s worth of appeal. It was a pretty unique look all around, small yet dominating space, blacked out tail end with obscured tail and reverse lights, door handles in the B-pillars, body colored everything, so on.
It’s a shame that the Beretta/Corsica line died off after just little under a decade(replaced by the small-bodied continuation of the Chevrolet Malibu in 1996), given its pedigree in speed as well as its pedigree in being an all around decent generic little car. Replaced largely cause it began to be too good at its job, it got GM worried the Beretta Z/26 started to encroach upon the Camaro and Cavalier Z/24 too much and leech away sales from the “flagship models”, which in my opinion is utter bullshit – if a car is as good as it can be that fat and out of shape muscle cars lose sales cause of it, fix the fat and out of shape muscle car. But y’know, sales define a car’s lifespan and by proxy, others too.
In theory, that is. You see, they don’t fit. And trimming them wasn’t an option cause, were I to screw it up, that meant the end for a set of GTZ wheels right there. So I just ran with it, and it’s not that much of an eye sore by the end of it, right? I mean, given how good the kit is overall, who gives a damn that the spokes don’t quite fit the rims, it’s fine! To close this whole rambling-session off, the red paint’s the same one I used on the 
The 1970 Coronet is one of those cars that is truly unique all the while remaining close to its roots, specifically with the styling, or at least from the ’65 Coronet on wards. It carried over the square shape, it carried over the grille increasing in size towards the headlamps, it carried the long hood and trunk design, it kept the very basic nature of its previous iterations and yet somehow manages to look the most alien, the most unique and honestly, in my opinion at least, the most beautifully wacky muscle car of all time. What makes it more unique is that unlike very, very many cars – it was only like this for a single year.
The designers on their cars had freaking field days, damn near every car for the 1970 model year were gorgeous, even the boring ones. It truly was the era of the muscle car, but it was just as well just the finest era for cars in general, besides the obvious problems. And MPC was on top of this shit back in the day, with dealer promo’s leaving the production line in high demand and focusing their work on that, following it all up with glue kits based on the dealer promo’s some time later.
Now fast forward to 2008, two sub re-releases later(same parts, different day) with MPC bringing the Coronet Super Bee back like it was in 1992, just better. For instance, it now had a much, much improved decal sheet with both the C-shape decals as well as the tail trunk stripes, proper engine badging and finally some decent Super Bee emblems to boot. Skip time to 2017, and yes I hear you going “what about the Dirty Donny editions?” and I raise you a “What about ’em?”. They were based on the Pro Street version and actually had less going for them than the ’08 MPC release, so screw ’em. This version on the other hand has all of the stuff going for it since AMT’s update in the early nineties and the only thing it lacks is the pro street tires, despite the wheels still being there.
And again, just like usual, the fucking rim doesn’t match the tire. I love the enthusiasm for pad printed tires, especially from AMT who is the only one who has them printed on the rubber and not just included on a decal sheet but they are not a one-size fits all kind of tire. I’ve been going over this complaint on every single kit AMT has re-released since 2011 – the 
It’ll tell you to take a sixteenth of a inch from the bottom of the side windows on the windshield and it’ll tell you to saw off the front of the front side of the frame under the radiator. Why? Cause it’s a mish-mash in the end, the interior tub will collide with the windshield and basically kill any form of getting the whole thing getting together and the front lip has to be sawed off the frame otherwise the bottom bit of the body with the indicators will simply not fit.
But I digress. What isn’t MPC shoddiness is AMT Ertl perfection; the 440 Six Pack engine is… something else. The 340 V8 and the 440 Magnum from the 
Last year I built the 
Anyway, since I built that kit last year I’ve been pining to give it another whirl. Try get it done right this time though skip on most of the bits that made it a Choo Choo Customs, like passing on the sidepipes and the raised hood. I saw some ’87 El Camino SS’s that have the normal flat front(a front that does exist in kit form, though only on a single-release MPC kit from 1983…) that came in a two tone color set up and had a very similar graphics package as the 
Underneath, it’s a ’79 El Camino from MPC, simple chassis, very basic suspension, ultra simplistic interior and far too many floating parts like the awkward manner of how the radiator slides into the body and how the firewall is attached to the interior tub. However, AMT Ertl improved on this by cutting off the front end and tooling up a totally new Monte Carlo nosecone, with clear headlights and crisp-as-sin grille(the Chevrolet lettering may as well have been photo etched, that’s how fine it is) and gave it a new set of high quality wheels that were exclusive to the El Camino through the eighties. All in all, they took what they had and they improved it significantly. This is how it should be done, you don’t have to fix everything, just make it somewhat better.
The last few El Caminos that were special were crafted up by Choo-Choo Customs up in a factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee. These were little El Camino and Monte Carlo hybrids and the package was meant to be the same as the Monte Carlo upgrade; get a nice appearance package and some extra power for a bit more money, so you’d certainly stand out in the crowd. Though while the El Camino SS got the aerodynamic front and the stripes and even some brutal looking sidepipes, it didn’t get the L69(305ci/5.0L V8) engine upgrade like the Monte Carlo SS did, though the 350ci V8(which is the engine in this kit) was a option for both gas and diesels. Though, looking back at the last era of the car, you could tell GM was slowly shuttering the whole thing step-by-step, from bad feedback from customers to simply having better cars on the road from their own division. I mean, if you had a diesel El Camino, you’d be betting your income on maintenance. It also doesn’t help that while the car wanted to be a muscle car with a bed, that you only got a miserable 115 horsepower from a giant V8 was a obvious death sentence no matter how sporty you make it look.
But y’know, it’s 2017 and it’s always easier to look back and criticize than to actually do something about it, but that era is something worth remembering. And I suppose one of the biggest benefits of model car building is, no matter how shitty the car was or how bad the engine or how short the lifespan, if it was pretty – in plastic it lasts. And the ’86 El Camino is no different. Like I said, I wanted to turn it into even more of a Monte Carlo hybrid than it already was.
It all came down to the decals to make it work and I’m quite happy with how it panned out. The rest is all AMT Ertl, the kit just… works. It goes together decently enough with some extra improved reinforcements that keep the floaty bits actually in place some unlike the prior MPC El Camino kits. The only two issues I came across were typical MPC problems, like the chassis needing the strength of ten men to force and hold into place while overly strong glue attempts to connect the two and the fact that the front wheels are attached by a tiny bit of plastic and nothing more but pure good will keeping them aligned to the body.
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.
