AMT/Ertl #38071 1/25 scale Interstate Batteries Monte Carlo

Just when you think there is hope for more updated NASCAR kits to come along, you get blindsided by a kit that is so bad, you wonder what the management at AMT/Ertl was thinking of. Well, I can honestly say I know EXACTLY what they were thinking of. Make a new stock car kit, to cash in on the booming popularity of the NASCAR phenomenon, but spend as little cash on kit development as possible. These new AMT NASCAR kits are so old, they don't even use this chassis anymore in real life!

I compared this newest release to an AMT Kodak Chevy Lumina of Ernie Irvan that I built in the late 1980s. Guess what? That is mostly what you get in the box of the "new" Monte Carlo 2003 version. I know NASCAR racing is the king of Neanderthal technology. But there have been some advances in the last 18 years. While Revell-Monogram has at least tried to update their kits to reflect the changes, AMT/Ertl must have been hibernating, or ran out of cash. I think the latter is the case. Anyway, here are the gory details.

I was able to squeeze all of the new parts of this kit into one photograph. That includes the body and the decal sheet. Contemporary NASCAR racers are slab sided, so the chassis has been modified by adding a quarter inch of spacer around the outside perimeter.

But the details are inaccurate, look at the pictures of the hood pins to see to note that they are way too big to be to scale. Judging by the thickness of the body and the lack of detail, it appears that it was pirated from the Racing Champions die cast division of the RC2/ERTL corporation. The chassis in this new kit belongs in a museum now. Look at my comparison shots of the built car and the "new" kit. Among the many issues with the model are that this style wheels are not used anymore, the exhaust set up is completely out of date, there is no Earnhart bar on the chassis, and the quarter windows have NACA ducts, but they don't connect to anything. The decals are OK, but since the model is in 1/25 scale, the Slixx, JWTBM, and other aftermarket sheets won't work (those are in 1/24 scale, and it does make a difference), so if you want to do any other versions you cannot.

In summary, this disappointing kit is a serious waste of your modeling time. You want to build NASCAR models? Stick with the Revell/Monogram series kit and be much happier. You will find this one at swap meet tables for a buck real soon.