Revell 1/24UPS & Viagra NASCAR Ford Taurus kits By Greg Plummer

The continuing growth and success of NASCAR over the past decade has taken the sport from a regional entertainment venue to one that now dominates the U.S. racing scene. Big time drivers, big time purses, and now big time sponsors have made drivers into household names and NASCAR nearly as popular a sport to watch as any shown on the tube. Multinational companies have found NASCAR to be a good value in getting their name and product in the face of consumers. The cars have become rolling billboards, with the likes of Budweiser, UPS, Viagra, and Dupont replacing Hooters, STP, and Wrangler as the 200 mph corporate flagship shown for 3 hours every Sunday nationwide for 30+ weeks per year.

Modelers have benefited from the success of NASCAR as well, with new kits, decals, paints, and aftermarket detail parts to choose from. I imagine one could build just about every car on the grid of every race over the past 5+ years!! If only there was that much time to model!! Revell-Monogram has been the most prolific issuer of new kits, although for the most part it is in new decal and paint schemes, as opposed to new tooling. Mostly it's because of NASCAR, who is reluctant to change the rules and technical aspects of the cars themselves, so other than minor modifications, they are pretty much the same as they were 5-10 years ago. The kits are pretty decent, not much flash, and seam lines are reasonable to clean up, so they fall together without much difficulty. Both kits I built are skill level 3 on the box, but that is mainly because painting requires more than one color.

Both kits shown here are the latest 'slab-side' bodies that were introduced a few years back by R-M. Dale Jarrett's UPS Taurus and Mark Martin's Viagra Taurus are actually identical outside of the paint and decals. The fit is better than in the past, and they have made some nice improvements in some areas. The UPS car was built out of the box, but for the Viagra car, I added some aftermarket and scratch built items that gave a more realistic appearance to some parts of the car. It hardly approaches what is possible, but time constraints prevented an all out assault!!

The engine is made up of 19 parts, with decent engraving and detail. Separate headers, distributor and plug wires, alternator, power steering pump, and carburetor all fit nicely. I used a combination of Tamiya acrylics and Krylon rattle cans to paint both cars. I like the Krylon aluminum because it has a nice smooth finish and flat appearance. It also dries quickly. The distributor and wires are a bit funky, but after painting they look acceptable in the kit form. On the Viagra car, I replaced the belts and pulleys with pieces from Machined Aluminum Specialties NASCAR Detailing System, which included a distributor, plug wires, and a starter. As you can see, it looks a bit more realistic! It was also nice to find ZERO chrome parts. Racecars rarely chrome engine pieces, and I'm glad to see Revell-Monogram get rid of it in these kits.

Suspension and chassis assembly are next, which is pretty straightforward. This part of the kit has changed little from the late '90's offerings from R-M. Painting is simple: everything is gray, gray, and gray! The front upper and lower suspension arms are satin black (Krylon again), but the rest of the chassis calls for flat or gloss gray (Tamiya). I guess it makes repairs on the real thing easier that way!

A rear chassis valance and separate rocker panels are new pieces that fit the updated bodies of the Taurus. On Martin's Viagra car, I decided to improve the rear springs and panhard rod, since they are both pretty crude in kit form. The springs are basically blobs of plastic that even with a wash don't really add much to their appearance, so I cut the ends off and added wound wire for the springs themselves. Aluminum tubing runs through each for the anchor points. I extended the anchor points through the chassis to represent the spring adjustment jacks that can be adjusted through holes in the rear window. The Panhard rod in the kit had seam lines, and is supposed to be round (not), so I cut that off and replaced it with aluminum tubing as well. Both areas look much better. MCM provided the turned oil tank and cooling pump pulleys for the differential. The belt is not to scale, but looks better than the molded one in the kit.

The wheels are much improved, with slotted backs and disc brakes over the solid wheels of earlier generations. No calipers, but at least it's an improvement. The tires, on the other hand, are still the same old shiny something (rubber?) attached to each other by a shiny something tree. It would not be much to ask for more accurate tires; Hey, Tamiya can do it!! They look like something from a toy. Armed with my Dremel tool fitted with a sanding wheel, in no time they looked like the real thing, but it's disappointing that the tires have not been updated. Another problem with the tires: a molded part number is stamped into the exposed sidewall! Each wheel half fits against a ridge on the inside of the tire, so to get the clean side out, I had to remove the ridge to get the wheel halves to fit completely against the tire sidewall. Not a big deal to do, but it the part number should have been in the inside sidewall in the first place. The Goodyear/Eagle logos finish the sidewall that after a brush coat of clear semi-gloss look great.

Painting the bodies also involved the gray (inside), and a two-color scheme outside. After priming with Tamiya Fine White primer, the Jarrett car was sprayed with Krylon gloss white enamel. After a few days to completely dry, I polished it with Micro-Mesh polishing cloths for a smooth, shiny surface. The instructions called for "gloss brown" on the rear of the car, but gave no specific paint hue to match. That presented a problem, because the 88 decal numerals are not plain gloss brown. The box art is supposed to be a photo of the actual car, but that brown was way too light, and was nowhere near what the decal brown showed. The instructions were no help either, and even called for black paint on the decal placement page. I ended up airbrushing a mix of Tamiya gloss brown with gloss black and a bit of Hull Red to get a better match. This is an area where Revell-Monogram could do a better job in their paint guide. The Viagra car did not suffer the same fate, as the decals do not need to match the primary color like the 88 car does. I used Tamiya Gloss Black from their excellent acrylic aerosol line, while leaving the front spoiler white.

Applying the decals is straight forward, and they settle in with minimum amount of setting solution. The only issue I had with Jarrett's UPS scheme is that the color underneath shows through where the brown and white edges meet. More careful masking would have prevented this, but since there are decals separating the colors, I didn't think it would be necessary. The Viagra Taurus is primarily black, so the white decal does not have to hide anything, but there is still some bleed through, leaving the white areas with a hint of gray.

The seatbelt decal is pathetic, but I used it on Jarrett's Taurus.. Can't see it, but believe me it is there!! I used aftermarket belts for Martin's car, and they improve the look a ton. The belt material is from Modelers. It's the best I have seen, comes in colors and is adhesive backed. The photo etched buckles are from Scale Automotive. Other than some detail painting to the instrument panel, I left the rest of the interior as is on both cars.

The window edges were masked and sprayed with Krylon semi-flat black and the pronounced edges of the glass make masking and painting a snap. Both hoods have molded in hood pins that I replaced on the #6 car with photo-etch examples from Detail Master from my parts box. It looks a ton better. Another easy improvement was to replace the molded in vent pipe on the left rear with a short piece of aluminum tubing, also from the parts bin.

Overall, these were enjoyable cars to build. The fit and finish is as good as any, the decals and graphics look great, and there are plenty of resources out there to build a show-winning example of Nascar's best. Now only if Mark Martin can win a championship.......!!