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I'll be watching this build Hanabi. Very nice wheels.

Very nice work Jeff.

Fabricated some simple shocks. I will add the coil springs before they are permanently installed.

AC had to modify the foot boxes to make room for the 427. Of course the Sunny kit doesn't includes these mods. The interior on the right is the kit part, the one on the left I have modified. I now have room (I hope) to squeeze in the Revel Parts Pack 427.

Yea Mike the Cougar II was built on a Cobra leaf spring chassis CSX2008 and the IMC kit is indeed based on the AMT chassis. Here is a picture of the Cougar II chassis from Bill Geary's excellent build of that kit.

Thanks Len & Carl. I plan to make the front suspension fairly accurate since it is visible in the engine bay and from underneath. I am taking a bit of a short cut with the rear suspension using the leaf springs in lieu of fabricating the upper A arms which would be almost fully obscured on the completed build. I hope I have room to add the coil overs at the rear suspension. Some reference photos for comparison.

Looks like a great kit. Can't wait for the Escort RS1600.

Great project. The MRRN article RancheroSteve mentioned is very helpful.

It is Robert. The big block car had both front and the rear fenders widened to fit larger tires. In fact they increased the width of the whole car to accomidate the bigger engine. They also beefed up the chassis by increasing the main fame tubes from 3" OD on the SB chassis to 4"OD on the BB chassis. Towards the end of the Shelby contract AC cars did a short run of SB engined cars using the BB coils spring chassis. They called their car an AC289.

Thanks Ray & Shay. I know there are some passionate Cobra fans on this forum, including myself and I won't meet everyone's expectation on this build I am sure. Not trying to set the bar just raise it a bit.

Another nice one Hanabi.

The Sunny kit is based on the AMT kit and this is where the problems begin. The AMT kit (which I also like very much) is a small block (260/289) chassis and as such used the leaf spring suspension. The big block (427) car ran the updated coil spring suspension. So the first order of business is the attempt the suspension conversion. I have modified the front suspension components from an old glue bomb Monogram. Here compared to a stock AMT chassis you can see the differences. Note my modified suspension is still missing the coil over shocks and the steering tie-rods.

The Sunny/Minicraft kit doesn't get much love and while some of the criticism is deserved I think (hope) I can build a respectable big block Cobra. Personally I like the Sunny body Here it is a compared to the Monogram. I don't intend on correcting every discrepancy in an effort to create the ultimate 1/25 scale 427 but I do want it to look the part to any knowledgeable Cobra fan.

Since I'm in a Cobra mood and I had to surrender my Dragonsake to the resin caster I thought I would scratch that itch by taking on a 1/25 scale Cobra 427. Revellogram offers a very nice 427 but it is 1/24 scale. Since I have a few 1/25 scale 289 Cobras in my collection I really want a 1/25 scale 427 to keep everything in scale. Here the scale difference is obvious. The gray car on the right is the AMT Cobra, middle car is the Sunny 427 and the red car on the left is the Monogram kit.

Very nice. Great color.

If the strategy really was to sell the kit to memorabilia collectors and entry level builder I would have taken a different approach. I would have designed the kit with a one piece chassis plate with my entire engineering and marketing budget going into getting the body details correct and paying the TV licensing fees. Release and sell this version of the kit. Then in a year or so I would take my accurate body replace the one-piece chassis plate with a correct chassis, engine, running gear etc. and sell it as full-detail kit to enthusiast simply as a Ford Torino.

Love it.

So Revell designed this kit for people that don't build models - make sense now.

Tried to send you a PM with a reference article attached but it said you cannot receive PMs(?)

Always liked this kit except for the headers. I think they hang way too low on the finished build.

Miniature box art. I love box art but I would rather have extra parts or decals as a bonus.

Looks like a great project Stephen.

Looking forward to this build Cameron. Have any good reference material to share? I have the 1/24 scale RA272E Hasegawa kit I want to tackle some day.