ClassicDarts

I bought a silver MPC '83 Chevy Cavalier promo recently with the intention of taking it apart to detail paint the lights, dash, door panels, window trim etc. (if not outright repainting the body and interior a different color) I went the promo route because it's much cheaper than the kit version and it has a more accurate-looking wheel offset than the kit. I noticed though, that most of the model is glued together. (other than the two screws holding the front part of the chassis plate in place) Is there a specific method of debonding the glue without breaking anything? Or, did promo versions of models use a specific type of glue that differs from typical model glue, etc.? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Well, yeah I was a little off in what I said... I thought I read before (probably a post on this forum, actually) that the Ventura came out early in the year and that, mid-'77, MPC retooled the Ventura into the '77 Nova. I forgot that there was an MPC '77 Nova annual... I mainly remembered the '79. But either way, the tooling for Ventura no longer exists. (unless I'm completely mistaken) edit: oops. I guess we replied at the same time. haha

Excellent job! I've been wanting to get this kit for years, but every time the opportunity comes up, they're prohibitively expensive. Probably no hope for a re-release either... since this kit was re-tooled into the "Squad Rod" '79 Nova. But it's nice to know someone built it how I probably would have... except better. A guy in my neighborhood has one of these... most likely the only '77 Ventura left in this province. I do not know him, but I'm positive he must be old enough to know better. What did he do with it? Painted it flat black with a huge Punisher skull on the hood and fake blood splatter and bullet holes all over it. What are you 14?? lol. It was painted like a bad demolition derby car... and that was before he got into an accident with it and crumpled the passenger-side grill and front fender.

This was an RC2-era 10th Anniversary Trans Am. I bought it in a 4-pack of models with the "AMT" (at the time) '72 Cheyenne, '72 Chevelle and '67 GTO around 2006 at WalMart. (when they still sold model kits... don't know about other areas, but they haven't sold them here in years) From the very start, I wanted to build this as a stripper Firebird because you never really see them outside of the occasional Rockford Files build, never in any diecast form and because they have their own charm. In some ways I think they look better than T/A's. Anyway, I never got around to actually building it until last year because of the amount of free time I had. The others (other than the GTO) were built shortly after I bought them. I wouldn't call myself an experienced modeler by any means. I've drifted in and out of the hobby a few times over the years, and this was my first experience with actually using body filler, (bondo in my case) shaving and cutting things off and generally not building a model that was more-or-less box stock. Here's how it looked when I'd just built it: I probably should've built it as a curbside because since then the hood fell on the floor a few times and chipped away at my crappy bondo work. More recently, I've gone back and re-silver sharpied the wheels, added fender well and rocker trim, and ditched the out-of-place, nearly offroad tires that came with the kit in favor of more appropriate whitewalls. Here's how it looks now: (it was raining slightly today so excuse the scattered drops on it) You can see the outlines of where the t-tops, fender vents and shaker scoop opening were. The interior doesn't fit quite right in the body. And, in hindsight, I probably should've left off the T/A exhaust tips. But, I did cut off the stems from the mirrors and made my own from leftover custom AMT Gremlin rollcage pieces (or custom lake pipes, or what looked like plastic axles, I forget now) so that the mirrors would actually fit the body close to correctly. As well as cut the license plate area out of the rear bumper and made it more inset as it is on the real car. (the rear license plate backing was made from a piece of the Gremlin's unused custom front air dam. the plate decal from the Bad Company '82 Dodge Van decal sheet, and the not entirely accurate Rally II rims from the '67 GTO... I used what I had on hand) I now have a resin base firebird hood to replace my attempt at creating my own... but it still needs to be trimmed to fit and painted.