Introduced mid-season 2007, NASCAR’s “Car of Tomorrow” (COT) hit the track in an effort to improve driver safety, decrease operating cost, and level the proverbial playing field between the monster multi-car teams and the smaller race teams competing in the Sprint Cup Series. Although received with skepticism and initial contempt by some drivers, the “wing thing” proved to be a more rugged, reliable, and measurable machine than its predecessor. With COT’s arrival, manufacturer’s body styles settled in around 4 core models: Chevy Impala, Ford Fusion, Dodge Charger, and Toyota Camry.

Round2, under their AMT brand, has rolled out a set of “Snapit” Chevys capturing the essence of the 2010 NASCAR Impalas, including 4 in the Hendrick Motorsports liveries of the #48, #24, #5, and the #88 cars, and a “generic” version marketed for use with aftermarket decals – the latter being featured in this review. Being a “Snapit” kit, I thought this would be a fun review to tackle with my youngest, Camden, age 5-1/2 at the time of build. Camden, though young, has many a build under his belt, frequently talks smack about how his “stash” is larger than mine (not true, by the way), and loves watching NASCAR with Mama and me every week.

Needless to say, when the review sample arrived in the mail, and he saw what was in the box, he was quite “ate up! “

AMT’s Impala, although a snap kit, sports a nice amount of detail for the more discriminating modeler, although it is “sans engine.” Having been away from NASCAR kits for a few years, I was thrilled to see pre-lettered seamless vinyl tires, prepainted window trim and wedge wrench locators, prepainted wheels, and steel axles. Parts come crisply molded in white, light gray, black, and clear. Parts for wing and spoiler configurations are included, as NASCAR reverted back to the traditional spoiler mid-season 2010. Seat, dash, and basic interior detail is well-executed and sufficient for an out-of-box build.

Build was very simple and fairly friendly for small hands. Camden easily assembled most of the cockpit interior, but struggled just a bit getting the shifter in. Although the snap engineering is very good, we touched all the joints with some liquid cement for survivability purposes (this will be handled by 5 year-old on a regular basis). Also very welcome were the handful of screws for securing major assemblies to one another. Body, hood, wing, and chassis assembly was easy, but placement of the splitter braces required a bit of finesse, so dad needed to chip in here. Big hands were needed to press wheels into the tires, and even that took a bit of effort. Since this was a kid build, we opted to not paint. Even with the plastic color, the kit looks surprisingly nice! In less than 2 hours, we had the whole thing assembled – a great way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon after the Little League game is rained out!

A couple evenings later, we rolled out his blank Chevy and applied the “generic” decals for the #53 Auto World car. A brief search of the internet indicated a number of aftermarket decals are available for 2010 Impalas outside of the Hendrick stable. The kit’s decals were very well printed, and responded nicely to the MicroScale system. The big, colorful decals going down on relatively smooth surfaces provided a great teaching opportunity for my little modeling buddy. They provided enough color to capture his interest long enough to allow him to get some good repetitive training on basic decaling techniques. In less than an hour, all decals were on and the model was complete.

My only disappointment in the whole project came when I learned that there are no plans, currently, to offer the Camry, Fusion, or Charger body styles. Hopefully these Chevys will take off and there will be a solid business case for bringing the other manufacturers into the series.

We really enjoyed this father-son project, and I highly recommend the kit for any NASCAR modelers looking for an affordable COT Impala kit or for a fun modeling project to do with a little one in their sphere of influence. I liked it so much, I may go out and grab another with some #14 aftermarket decals and build one for Mama’s birthday or our anniversary. How do you think that will go over?

Many thanks to the visionary crew at Round 2 LLC for the sample kit and and IPMS/USA for another fun build with my son!