Bill Elliott Dodge Intrepid NASCAR Stock Car
 
Being a Chrysler fan, AND a NASCAR fan, I was needless to say, very excited when Dodge announced that they were returning to Winston Cup racing in 2001. And, I was looking forward to building an Intrepid stocker for my collection. And considering the level of detail in Revell's NASCAR kits, I was expecting something of the same ilk. I was, unfortunately disappointed. First off, I must say that the body is excellent. The molding was high quality, with almost no seams or flash to clean up, although the body is VERY thick. And, the vinyl window net and hoses, the tampo printed tires, and some of the other details were much to my surprise. But the overall detail of the kit suffers greatly compared to Revell's previous efforts. The kit is obviously baseed on a 1:24 diecast, and in many areas, has been simplified.  The kit seems to be made of a different type of styrene than I am used to. It is quite a bit softer than syrene kits I have built in the past. Admittedly, this kit was a quick build, but that was NOT what I was looking for. This being said, I ended up building this one pretty much box stock, which is highly unusual for me. I have been putting more and more detail into my work, and I just couldn't see the point in doing the same for this one. The car DOES make a good display piece, but I'm not particularly happy with the kit overall, I hope that Revell gets it's collective act together soon, because this one was very disappointing! And an attept to e-mail them to let them know how I feel, was impossible since they show no e-mail link to contact them.
 
OK, enough complaining, on with the feature! 
 

 
 
 
 
Like I said in the intro, the kit DOES build up to be a nice looking display model.The body is EXCELLENT and the decals are high quality. The paint I used was Plasti-Cote bottle touch up paint. The color is, I beleive, 2001 Dodge Bright Red which I think is a good match for what Uncle Ray used on the 1:1 car. By the way, I shot it straight from the bottle, and it went on perfectly!
 
 
The Chassis. Here's where the diecast lineage became apparent. Note in the trunk area the screw pads? I filled these in from the bottom.
 
 
Here's the low chassis shot. As good as the body was, the chassis was 180 degress opposite. VERY SIMPLE. VERY POOR! I did the best that I could with what I had, but I just couldn't motivate myself to put any more effort than this into it. And no matter what I did, I could not get the headers and the exhaust dumps to match up properly.
 
Prologue
 
 
Nearly the entire experience with this kit was a cluster.From Model Maxx, where I bought the kit, who took 4 weeks to finally decide, after my threatening them to cancel the order to ship it, to the building of the kit, which I must admit looks good on the outside, but was not much of a challenge.
 
 
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