Completed AMT-ERTL 1996 Chevrolet Camaro

[mej023]

Despite the outcome, which I'm pretty happy with, this is a turd of a kit. It's possibly the worst kit I've built in all the builds I've done and given one of those was the Fujimi Mitsubishi Starion, that's saying something. Detail is great. Fitment is non-existent. I often judge a kit's fitment by how much superglue (or worse - hot screwdriver) I have to use to get it to stay in one piece. Aside from the engine which was glued with normal poly, it's nearly all superglue/hot screwdriver. I'll list a few problems (and there are many more mind) below:-

1) Wheels do not steer together. In fact I don't think they're supposed to be steered at all. But left straight, it's clear how much they stick out. Force-turned hides this.

2) Body and chassis do not fit together happily at all. The whole thing feels both twisted and misaligned. Only 3 wheels touch the floor at once. There's a lot of superglue at work here.

3) Entire interior only holds together after being hot screwdrivered. The dashboard will not stick regardleess of glue, there's just not enough contact between the straight dashboard ends and the twisted interior.

4) If you glue the air filter ducting in the engine bay, the bonnet will not shut.

5) The roof-windscreen piece has only one contact area to the rear hoop, 5mm wide and 1mm deep. So there's blu-tack instead.

So I hope you enjoy the pics, but if this inspiires you to build the same, make sure you really *love* Camaros if you're going to take it on. I don't have any other AMT/ERTL kits in the stash, and I'm pretty glad too.