53 Bel Air roof

[Adam deCoste]

I am making a 1/25 replica of this car

the problem is i dont know what roof to use to make the model from a hard top to a sedan. Im using the revell 53 bel air 3n1 kit. Do you guys know what i could use?

Edited January 25, 2011 by Adam deCoste

[Draggon]

The AMT 51 Chevy looks like a good place to start. Revell has the 54 Chevy too, but the roof of the 51 looks closer.

The 51

The 54

On second thought, why not just modify the Bel Air roof? Theres a lot of work to do with either the 51 or 54, and it would seem to me that just modifying the stock roof woudl be easier. Also if you look at the side profile, the coupe in you pic, Adam, has a longer trunk and shorter roof than the purple 54 in the above pic.

[moparmagiclives]

If you can find a 51 post style body, I would just use that body and build the oval back window, instead of swapping roofs. I like that silver scallops on black....looks killer on that body

[Art Anderson]

OK, a little bit of "help" here:

For starters, Chevrolet had but one basic body series 1949-54, with 49-52 being only mildly facelifted year to year, the '53 having a major facelift of the lower sheet metal, but if one looks at the roofs and windshield shapes, it's easy to see that the '53-54 is the same series of body structures.

OK, the car in the first pic is a "Business Coupe", meaning a 2dr with a full B-post, but having a roof (greenhouse) which is several inches shorter front-to-back than either a 2dr or 4dr sedan. It does have the higher roofline of the sedan bodies though. The Revell-Monogram '53 Chevy Bel Air is a hardtop, with no B-post; those were created by welding a steel top onto a convertible body shell (in fact, a lot of advertising, and most people, back then referred to this body style as a "hardtop convertible" which in fact most truly were). Convertibles had a noticeably shorter windshield than sedans or coupes of the era, both for sporty appearance and for engineering convertible tops that would stay put at highway speeds.

AMT Corporation (later AMT/Ertl produced kits of three different '51 Chevies: Bel Air Sport Coupe (AKA "hardtop), Bel Air Convertible, and the Fleetline 2dr fastback sedan. Monogram (now Revell Monogram) produced a 1953 Bel Air Sport Coupe, which has a slightly different roof than the earlier 50-52 cars, having a reverse-angle C-post (dogleg shape). Revell, in the 1960's, introduced a Chevrolet 2dr sedan (yeah, 2dr with a post) in both 1953 and 1954 variants, as a gasser.

One can combine the Revell '53-'54 sedan "greenhouse" with the Monogram '53 Bel Air HT to make a Bel Air 2dr sedan, but it will take some work, as the Revell body is 1/25 scale, the Monogram body 1/24, the difference being most notable in the width of both of these body shells. To make it a business coupe, the rear area of the Revell sedan body's greenhouse needs to be shortened, about 1/4 inch (6" in scale) to make the shorter, more "close-coupled" business coupe, most of which had no rear seat, but rather a small cargo deck there, with a much longer trunk cavity (think a car for the traveling salesman here).

Hope this helps a bit!

Art

[SSNJim]

Model Car World produces a resin 51 Coupe with that roof style. Of course the rear fenders and grill opening are different, but those should be easily rectified. MCW says that the AMT 51 Fleetline is the donor kit, but who knows about the 53/54s?

That was the only affordable 49-54 coupe I was able to find in either plastic or resin when I needed one for a project.