Dodge Coronet dragster body. Has anyone built one of these?

[GMP440]

Has anyone tried to do a model of this drag car? What dragster kit could be used for this? Maybe this could be done with the Monogram 69' Coronet Superbee body? Is there maybe a resin body for this?

[GMP440]

My bad, here is the pic.

[mageckman]

I believe you are referring to the yellow "funny car"? The original "Dodge fever" Coronet was built by Jim Keeler in 67 or 68. A tribute model "Dodge fever 2" was built in 87 or 88. There was a writeup on it in the October 1988 issue of Scale Auto Enthusiast(RIP).According to the article he started with a Coronet body, the frame was scratchbuilt, the motor turned over as did the blower. It sounds like alot of moving parts and a lot that was scratchbuilt. I have the article in front of me as I write this. As far as I know no one has done an actual kit of this car, I also believe this was a fictitious car.Hope this helps.

[Mark]

If you have the set of CAR MODEL magazines that contains the series of articles written by Jim Keeler, you could build a Dodge Fever. The first one was built for a CAR MODEL contest involving the '68 Coronet kit. Jim built a second one (not sure which year body he used, '68 or '69) and photographed the building process step-by-step for the series of articles. The chassis was built like an Indy Car "aluminum tub" with sheet plastic overlaid with thin aluminum with rivet detail that was pressed in. Two engines were built; the first with a Revell Parts Pack engine (which can be found in the Miss Deal Studebaker kit), the second used a Jo-Han single-piece engine block from an Olds 442 kit. The body was cut down from a stock MPC annual kit body.

If you go through the articles, you can probably get the vast majority of parts from reissues of the kits originally used. The AMT/MPC '70 Coronet body could be used if a junker '68 or '69 body can't be found. A few loosely copied versions turn up in later issues of CAR MODEL, but to my knowledge nobody has attempted to build a Dodge Fever recently.

As an aside, does anyone else see the resemblance between the Dodge Fevers and the AMT Digger 'Cuda (first issued in 1970)?