Testors/Lincoln Mint

1/24 2006 Dodge Charger Daytona R/T

Kit Number: 5316

Reviewed by  Walt Fink, IPMS# 2447

MSRP: $25.00 The many parts of this kit are packaged like no other kit I've ever seen ... all the sprues are attached to cardboard stiffeners and packed in separate poly bags. Besides the body shell, chassis and interior tub, there are eleven sprues of white plastic, two clear sprues, and a chrome sprue. I give it an A for packaging, but all this fits into an end-opening box which makes it a little difficult to access the model during the building process. Nothing compares with being able to see the real machine for reference, so before beginning the build, I visited both Dodge dealers in my local area. I was able to shoot some good pictures of a Charger at Benoy Motors, giving me good references for interior colors as well as the rest of the car. As I drove into Viking Dodge, I was approached by a really enthusiastic young salesman who proclaimed, "Welcome to Viking and the World of Dodge! How can I help you?" I told him I just wanted to look at a Charger and I could see dollar signs in his eyes---"Oh, you bet!" he said, "We have several in stock." "No, no, I mean I just want to LOOK at one so I can build my model." I saw his shoulders slump and felt bad for him, but he was helpful and got a catalog for me to take along. Armed with my photos and his literature, I went home to attack the kit. The instruction sheet is a mixed bag; on the plus side, the first two pages feature some great modeling tips and techniques (though page one states the kit has a metal body). On the negative side, there are some errors in the instructions -- particularly with the engine assembly -- so take time and dry-fit all the parts first. Some parts are omitted. As the instructions progress, the drawings don't show parts installed in previous steps, and there are some questions I had as to some parts' locations and orientations. Unlike all the other car kits I've ever built, this one has pins and locating holes for most parts, and the fit of everything is nearly perfect. The engine assembly is straightforward if you use your modeling experience, but following the pictorials in the instructions will confuse the issue as parts and holes don't appear as they should. On the real car I photographed, the engine block was aluminum, rather than black as the painting instructions specify. The pulley-and-belt accessories didn't fit the front of the block very well and needed some fiddling first (Photo #1). The tie rod (part 82) is never shown but should be installed in step 10 along with the rest of the front suspension; the center heat shields (parts 56 and 57) are shown backwards in the instructions. The wheels and tires are great. There are no sprue nubs or seam lines on the tires and they're soft enough so the rims pop in easily. The rims have lug nuts and valve stems molded in, and their sprue gates are on the center area of the rims so no chrome gets marred when removing them from the trees. Paint the inside wheel hubs silver or steel -- not black as specified -- to represent the brake rotors (Photo #2). To replicate the real two-tone Daytona interior (Photos #3 and #4) I used Gunze H336 Hemp and H77 Tire Black, with the center console and center instrument panel color-keyed to the body color (Photo #5). The front seats needed putty to fill the gaps between their fronts and backs (Photo #6) but apart from that, the interior pretty much snaps together and looks great when finished (Photos #7 and #8). There are no gauges for the instrument cluster so I substituted some from an aftermarket set. The firewall is part 44, not 29 as specified, and goes in front of the interior tub, not on the inside as shown in the directions. To make sure I got the same shade of color on all the parts, I temporarily taped all the body components together from the inside and painted the shell with Testors Bright Yellow enamel (Photo #9). I figured I'd omit the side windows to show off that nice interior. Wrong. Those actually form the outside contour of the car on the B and C pillars, so rather than resorting to surgery on the clear parts, I went ahead and marked them for installation at the end of the build. Like all the windows, they're black-trimmed and have to be painted. There's no decal provided for the rear deck lid face (Photo #10), so that has to be painted black, and the fore-and-aft channels along the roof line should be black as well. The outside rear view mirrors' pedestals are black with body color mirror housings -- shown on the box art but not the instructions (Photo #11). Under the hood, the strut towers should be painted body color with a black center, and the inset for the air management shroud painted Hemi Orange. I painted part of the underside of the hood black to represent the insulation. (Photo #12). When the major components were put together, the underhood area got really busy; some of the components needed a little adjusting in place to get the hood to close over them. When painting the taillight lenses clear red, I left two clear narrow lines on each to represent the backup lights (Photo #13). The headlight buckets fit into the front fascia from the back, not from the front as the instructions show. The driving lights on the lower front fascia are called out to be silver in the instructions but I elected to use a set of MV lenses for these. It's possible that clear parts 145 and 146 are meant to be the lenses for these lights but there's no mention of them. The decals are a mixed bag -- they all adhered and snuggled down nicely, but the finish is terrible. They were neither matte nor glossy, instead having glossy freckles on a matte finish and looked awful when applied. I overcoated them with Future to even out the finish, then sprayed flat over them to kill the shine, but the end result is far from satisfactory. There's no "Hemi" lettering provided for the air management shroud (Photo #14). The gas filler door can be posed open with a little work, but there's no hinge; I closed mine. The front air dam on my kit was warped and didn't fit the front fascia well at all -- but when turned upside down the fit was better, so that's how I installed it. This is a fine, fine kit from Testors, ranking as one of the two best-engineered car kits I've ever built; it's unfortunate that the instructions and the decal sheet let it down somewhat. If you're a moderately experienced builder with the patience to dry-fit everything and use common sense when building it, though, the end result is really nice. My next kit will be a Charger R/T without the Daytona option so I won't have to worry with the decals (Photos #15, #16, and #17). Thanks to Testors and to IPMS/USA for the chance to review this kit, to Benoy Motors for allowing me unlimited access to the real deal on their showroom floor, and to the enthusiastic young salesman at Viking Dodge for the literature. I hope he made a real sale that day to make up for my frugality.

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