Revell Fast & Furious ’69 Chevy Yenko Camaro (07694) 1:25

[Mike]

’69 Chevy Yenko Camaro (07694)

Fast & Furious

1:25 Revell

 

 

There’s a little-known petrol-head friendly film franchise called The Fast & The Furious that started out with Vin Diesel and the late lamented Paul Walker in a film by the name of “The Fast and the Furious” that now extends to nine films with a two-parter as 10th and 11th of the saga, plus a spin-off movie with two more planned, one with the ladies in charge, and one for the men.  I lost touch with it after number 2, as it I felt it was getting a little extreme in terms of what a car can do on the open road without CGI and wires helping out.

 

The Chevy Camaro was GM’s Pony Car, and it debuted in 1966 to compete with Ford’s Mustang, and the same basic chassis was also re-used in another competitor to the Mustang, the Pontiac Firebird.  By 1969 it was well-established, and was available with a 3.8L straight-six up to a terrifying 6.5L V8.  A few large dealers such as Yenko Chevrolet offered special editions, sporting a 6.6L engine and with a substantial upgrade package that included disc brakes, toughened gears, suspension upgrades, fancy stripes and other items too numerous to mention.  It was a niche car, and only a few hundred were sold in 4-speed manual and automatic transmission styles of the ’69 model.  These days that makes it a pretty rare vehicle.  That’s why the movie used replicas and patched-up junkers for the stunts, especially its final valiant demise when it jumps onto a speeding boat from the shore.  That was accomplished by using a foam-filled bodyshell pulled at speed by a cable that was digitally erased in post-production.

 

There were four generations of Camaro, with a hiatus after the millennium that was broken by the introduction of the fifth generation in 2010 that also had a Yenko variant, as does the current (at time of writing) sixth generation, although sales of the Camaro appear to be down in 2020, probably thanks to the pandemic.

 

The Kit

This is a special release of an original generic tooling of the Camaro dating back to 1990 in 1:25 scale, which is close enough to the de facto standard scale 1:24 as to make little difference unless you’re parking two of the same type together.  It has aged reasonably well with very little flash evident except for one of the chromed wheels for some unknown reason, although a quick scrape seems to have removed that without issue.  It arrives in an end-opening box with the Fast & Furious branding all over it and Vin Diesel’s mug staring into the middle-distance from one corner, wearing his traditional white v-necked tshirt and slightly confused expression.  Inside are five sprues and a bodyshell in white styrene, a sprue of chromed parts, a clear sprue and a clear red sprue, decal sheet and colourful instruction booklet with colour profiles on the rear pages.  The box is also GM and Universal Pictures branded, and there are trademarks everywhere, as you’d expect.

 

 

 

 

 

The engine is first to be made, constructed from a substantial number of parts to depict the enlarged V8 in bright red that comes with the Yenko branding.  The exhaust manifolds are each made up of two parts per side to obtain the correct look, and these fit into the sides of the engines, depicting four outlets per side.  The floor pan is painted all-over black and is joined by the front axle and anti-roll bars, the latter painted aluminium, as is the moulded-in fuel tank at the rear.  The engine bay is equipped with a number of small parts and a few decals before the engine is dropped into place on its mounts, with some red arrows showing the location points.  At the front of the floor pan, the radiator, its fan and tin-work, as well as the battery are made up and glued across the front of the engine bay with a couple of hoses linking the engine to the cooling system, just like the real thing.  The Camaro has a twin-exhaust to get the fumes out of the way quickly, with one pipe exiting on either corner of the rear.  The exhaust and mufflers are made from two parts, then painted a dull metallic or rusty brown then joined to the rear of the manifolds and clipped in place at either end of a laterally mounted muffler just behind the rear axle, with the pipes exiting as already mentioned.  The rear axle has its vulnerable differential moulded-in, and is fixed to the leaf-spring suspension at either end, then inserted into the rear wheel wells and joined to the transmission via a drive-shaft.  Additional dampers are fitted to the rear axle to improve traction and reduce tramping when under power, then the four corners are treated to a full set of wheels.  The fronts of the hubs are nicely chromed, while the rear is painted black, and appears to retain the drum brakes of the standard model.  Purists may want to get that squared away if they think it’ll be noticed.  The tyres are flexible and black, with a vintage zig-zag radial style tread and a seamline down the centre, which can be worn away with a sanding stick to give the tyres a scrubbed look.

 

 

The bodyshell is painted a metallic blue, with the headliner black, although there are a couple of ejector pins present in the roof that you might want to hide.  The windscreen and rear window are inserted from inside, and the front screen has the sun visors moulded-in, which are painted black and have the rear-view mirror glued between them.  At the rear the clear red brake lights are put in from behind and backed by chromed boxes to give them a more realistic look, then the door cards are painted a dark grey with silver piping, and a decal for the Camaro badge in the centre of the thicker feature strip at the top.  The passenger tub is similarly painted with Camaro decals on the front mats and for the rear parcel shelf, then the door cards are glued into position along with the simple rear seats with piping moulded into them.  The front seats are made up from a front and rear L-shaped section, and have a decal for the sYc logo on the headrest, plus a set of five-point belts in decals for the driver’s side, cos who cares about passengers?  The front seats have a slot on the underside that matches a ridge in the cab, and they glue in place there, with the driver on the wrong side of course.  The gear selector slides in between them, and then it’s time to paint and detail the dashboard.  It has decals for all the dials and the name badge, plus the radio and even the glove-box button.  The steering wheel also gets a choice of three styles of decals for reasons I’m not familiar with, as I don’t tend to stare at steering wheels when there’s pedal-to-the-metal action going on!  The wheel attaches to the short column, and that slots into the left side of the dash in turn, then the completed dash slides vertically into the cab at the front.

 

The tub is finally joined to the bodyshell from below, and the firewall and brake master cylinder are inserted into the back of the engine bay, and at the front the grille with clear lamps and chromed rears are popped in from the front, with two fog lights on the valance.  The floor pan and bodyshell are then mated, and the various inserts and chromed bumpers/fenders are glued front and rear, with numberplates, a rear spoiler, and the rear bumper having a pair of ugly over-riders, which was probably a legal requirement at the time.  A single chromed wing mirror attaches to the driver’s door, and a chromed dish for the top of the air box is added to the styrene lower along with a couple of decals for it.  There’s one decal depicting the grille in the side of the circular air box, a 427 Turbo-jet 425hp show-off badge on the top of the airbox, and a couple of smaller ones to boot. The airbox fits to the top of the block, a pair of corner braces are added to the front of the bay, and another show-off decal is applied to the slam panel in red, stating Venko/SG 427, just in case you’d forgotten.

 

The bonnet/hood has sound insulation moulded into the inside, a couple of light ejector pin marks can be found in the corners, and to complete the assembly a circular fairing is added to direct the cool air from the intake on the bonnet into the waiting airbox for filtering.  The bonnet has hinges moulded-in, and these flex and clip into place, leaving you with an opening bonnet unless you decide to freeze it with glue.  There’s another raft of decals to enhance the sound insulation in the bonnet too, in lots of swooping shapes, plus a small red stencil at head height when the bonnet is open.

 

 

Markings

This is a film car, so you’ve only got the one choice of colours unless you just wanted another Camaro model to paint how you like.  It’s a metallic blue with the Yenko stripes on the sides and bonnet, plus the optional decal stating “Driver: Paul Walker”, which confused me, as that’s the actor’s name, not the character.  Maybe this was a tribute to him at some point?  It’s a long time since I saw the film, and you know what my memory’s like.  From the box you can build this, with the optional sYc number plates, Florida plates, or some undocumented Year One plates, as well as the driver decal mentioned earlier.

 

 

 

Decals are by Cartograf, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin gloss carrier film cut close to the printed areas.  The decals include rear wheel intake scoop decals, badges for the front wings, boot and bonnet, as well as repeaters/reflectors for the wings front and rear.  Additionally, a pair of silver rectangles are supplied for the large rear light cluster centre sections.  One overhead diagram shows the 2 Fast 2 Furious logo on the windscreen, and a Year One logo on the rear, which was part of the publicity for the movie, and the car still does the show circuit in the US with Year One, who are a muscle car parts supplier that provided tons of replica spares for the movie.  Incidentally, the 2 Fast decal when applied should be more of an anti-glare band at the top of the screen, not slap-bang in the middle as shown on the instructions.  Drivers need to see the road ahead of them, apparently.

 

 

Conclusion

It’s not the newest of toolings, but it’s still pretty detailed, especially in the engine bay.  Ignoring the drum brakes and the odd ejector-pin mark, it should build up into a nice replica, with a bit of bling provided by the chrome and the movie decals.  Who makes a 1:25 Paul Walker figure?

 

Highly recommended.

 

Currently, Revell are unable to ship to the UK from their online shop due to recent changes in import regulations, but there are many shops stocking their products where you can pick up the kits either in the flesh or online.

 

 

Revell model kits are available from all good toy and model retailers. For further information visit

  or