Brief History of the Marque

The first generation Challenger bowed its head in 1969 and was a stable mate to the Plymouth Barracuda, the original Chrysler “pony car” to play in that segment as started by Ford’s Mustang. The second generation “Challenger” from 1978 to 1983 was a badge engineered Mitsubishi Galant Lambda. The current generation of Challengers was introduced in early 2008 again to do battle with the fifth generation Mustang and Camaro segments that were exploding in popularity.

The Kit

As indicated above, the subject kit’s body is very nicely painted in Dodge’s modern rendition of Plum Crazy metallic paint complimented with dual white painted racing stripes, a favorite color and look of it’s early 70’s hayday. This kit is also available in “Hemi-Orange” prepainted body as well. My samples’ purple paint job was practically flawless; the white stripes were right-on and again flawless. There is a separate 8 piece 6.4 litre engine that makes up into a very nice replica of the famous Hemi engine, too bad the engine bay hides most of it. The underside of the unibody chassis includes a separate and nicely molded exhaust system and front crossmember. The balance of the kit including the chassis and interior componants are crisply molded in a metallic dark grey plastic.

This kit marks a new genre of assembly kits for Revell and its’ large audience of automotive modelers. The Challenger and Camero pre-painted kits are targeted as a ‘bridge’ models for the modeler who want to graduate from the snap-tite models into full multi part unpainted main-line glue kits. Actually this kit and its siblings are for car modelers of all ages including adults that want to build nicely decorated car kits that they can’t or don’t want to paint for what ever reason. Believe me; this kit makes a very nice display model that anyone can be proud of.

The Build

The instruction sheet is well done and is composed of 11 “sub assemblies” starting with the engine and ending with attaching the mirrors. This last step I think is where there may be difficulties for the young and newbie builders. The mirrors attach to the body by gluing the mirror onto a molded pad on the door; there are no mechanical tabs and slots for both mirrors that you might find on other kits. Proper adhesion of the mirrors involves carefully scraping the paint off both of the door pad and the bottom of the mirror for adequate adhesion. I used Faller liquid glue applied with It’s needle tip. That folks is the tricky-est assembly part of this kit.

I started my build pretty much by the included directions; assembling most of the engine componants as well as detaching the exhaust system from the sprue and then shootingh those with Testors 1451 Aluminum plate. Next the interior was assembled as sub assemblies and painted with Tamya TS-42 Light Gun Metal spray. The instrument faces on the dash were later painted white. Finally I didn’t care for the chrome Conestoga wheel look so a quick dip in Castrol Super Clean removed (make sure you wear eye and hand protection) the plating. Then a quick spritz with Tamiya TS-38 Gun Metal made the wheels look more presentable to me; just a personal comment here folks. The only other modification I made to make the kit more realistic was to paint the engine bay part of the engine bay/interior module Plum Crazy as it is on the 1:1 car although the instructions call out black paint.

Conclusion

I think that Revell has successfully tapped into a new market with the Challenger and the Camaro that will appeal specificly to both ends of the modeler skill level spectrum. I run into people all of the time that don’t want to make a traditional paint and glue model but still want to do a more detailed kits compared to a snap fit kit because they are not ready for the body painting/decalling end of the build. This kit makes a nice shelf model you can point to and proudly say “I made that”. I reside on the assemble and paint end of the spectrum with an occasisional snapper, however I thouroughly enjoyed building and detail painting this attractive model; my friends at the model car club could not get over the how nice it turned out, especially the paint and tampoing. I had a blast building this model and it was a refreshing alternative to my normal builds. Thanks to Revell for supplying this review kit and IPMS/USA for allowing me to review it for you.