If I have to explain to you
what a Camaro is you might as well skip this review. Take up
knitting or flower arranging, because if you never heard of
a Camaro you ain't a car modeler.
America's Car
enthusiasts have been mourning ever since GM killed Camaro,
leaving the Ford Mustang sole heir to the pony car throne.
The 2006 Camaro Concept gave hope to hotrodders of the
resurrection of the Camaro marque.
While we can't buy a
full size Camaro from our GM dealer, the local hobby shop
will sell you this AMT kit of this Exciting show car.
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The first Company out of the gate with a new
Camaro kit is AMT. A lot has been said about AMT in recent
years, not all of it good. Stories of misleading box art,
and other issues have plagued AMT's re-issues, But their new
kits have gone a long way to earn them respect. This kit
will further enhance thier reputation.
The Box
art shows pictures of the built model, and is attractively
designed. The pictures give you an accurate look at what you
actually get inside the box. This kit is not perfect, but
AMT at least deserves B+ for this one. Why not an A? Well,
we'll get into that when I break down the details of this
kit.
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Body:
The Body of the Camaro is good looking and accurately
scaled, though I thought it wasn't at first. The 1:1 show
car is quite the large car in comparison to the 67-68 Camaro
that inspired it. None of the flaws are so bad that you
can't shoot some paint on it and have a decent shelf model
but there are some nagging things that will make this a long
build for the contest modeller.
The flaws in the bodywork can mostly be summed up in the
words "sink marks", they are literall everywhere. while not
deep, they will show if you plan to do a super glossy
finish. doing a guide coat and block snading the body will
allow you to see and eliminte them. My sample had especially
deep ones under the front valance.
As an aside I think that had RC2 not fire guys
like John Mueller who had years of experience in tooling
model cars, they could have avoided this problem.
On the upside all the correct details are there and well
rendered, and given the variety of modifications done to the
original, there are endless possibility for alternate builds
of this kit.
Several people have even been contemplating
what a Pontiac version of this would look like.
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Chassis:
The Chassis
is well engraved with many separate parts, the front wheels
can be posed, and the front and rear suspensions are
multi-piece arrangements. with careful detail painting this
could be a real jewel.
I don't have any good
reference photos of the under carriage of this car, but
seeing as it was based on the Monaro/GTO chassis I would
assume that it would be finished in a similar fashion.
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Interior:
  
Possibly
the best part of this kit is the mutli-part interior with
separate side panels, and a great dashboard. even the rear
seat is separate which will make the interior detailing that
much easier. The two piece rear seat even would allow for
the easy installation of rear seat belts if you so desired.
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Engine:
There
is not much to talk about here. On the full size car you
really don't see much of the engine, and the same is true of
AMT's scale model. The lack of detail is only in places that
you wouldn't ever see on the finished kit. The parts you do
see though are well done and look accurate.
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Wheels & Tires
Here is a classic
good news, bad news situation. The the tires are nothing
short of the best tires AMT has ever made, the wheels
however while are accurate and in scale, range in quality
from almost no sink marks (the ones I have) to severely sink
marked (in some I've seen posted elsewhere. the good news is
that the full size car has a satin finish, so filling the
sink marks, while tedious, is easy to do. finish the wheels
in Alclad or metalizer and you have a great looking set of
wheels.
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Craig Betts' 2006 Camaro build-up
Craig Betts
finished this build up only days before this write up was
completed. I thank him for letting me share this with you. I
chose his out of all the ones I've seen because it's a well
built representation of a near box stock build of this kit.
This model shows what can be done with some skill and
effort, to turn this model into a true beauty. Click on the
pictures below for full size images.
  
  
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Conclusion:
While there are
some challenges in the building of this kit I still give
this a good rating. I have been working on mine and it is
going together nicely. If the subject matter interests you
it is well worth the work to get one of these on your shelf.
Mine will be a speedster.
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