Revell

1/25 '57 Chevy Bel Air Two-Door Sedan

Kit Number: 85-4251

Reviewed by  Ben Guenther, IPMS# 20101

MSRP: $22.95 Website: www.revell.com The '57 Chevy Bel Air is a true American classic but for me the attraction was more personal. When I was nine my youngest aunt had a boy friend who had just bought a new '57 Bel Air and he would take us kids to the beach in it. I always thought that it was a neat car back then and while I built many model cars in my youth I never did a '57 Bel Air. So when the opportunity came around to do a review of this kit I jumped on it. Revell has produced a 2'n1 kit that allows you to make a stock car (which I did) or to customize it in various ways using the 150 parts provided on 10 white plastic sprues, 4 chromed sprues, 1 clear plastic spru and 1 red plastic spru. You can make a detailed stock 283 cu. Inch V-8 or customize it with custom valve covers, air cleaner and alternator. You are also given four stock tires with white walls or four low profile tires that you can equip with five spoke wheels or chrome wheels with moon style hubcaps. If one wishes one can also use the custom upper and lower "A" arms, rear axle and differential cover. The instructions consist of 12 pages with 18 steps clearly illustrated and marked for stock or custom assembly. Parts are listed by number and name along with paint colors. If you follow the sequence you'll have no problems. Okay folks we start with step one - engine assembly. Before I started I highlighted all the stock steps so as not to miss anything along the way. The engine went together with no problems and I painted the parts as I went. Now the engine and a few parts are to be painted Chevy engine red which when I checked turned out to be an orange-red or red-orange color. Not to stress out on this I used Testor's International Orange and I think it looks just great. Steps 2-5 are the chassis assembly and again everything went along quite nicely. Step 6 is wheel and tire assembly, the only thing I had to do out of the ordinary was to take a sanding block to the soft tires to remove the slight flash along the tire face. The next step is window assembly, but I wanted to paint the body before I added the windows so I gave the body two coats of 1200 Mr. Surfacer. This was followed by two coats of white lacquer. The engine area and the area under the front fenders were painted with a semi-gloss black lacquer. After drying the roof and the engine area was masked. I used Model Master Custom Lacquer system Tropical Turquoise 1957 for the body and it's a perfect match. After this had dried I wet sanded the turquoise with 4000 grit paper. The chrome areas were masked off and spray painted gloss black followed by Alclad II Chrome. After 3 hours the masks were removed and I spray painted three coats of clear gloss lacquer on the body. While I liked the results on the turquoise the results on the chrome wasn't as good, but I left it as it was. While these steps were being done I kept busy assembling the interior (steps 8-10). Finally, the windows were glued in then the interior was mounted to the body and the completed chassis glued in place. The last six steps are just to attach the various parts in the engine area, front and rear bumpers and external items (windshield wipers, trim, door handles, etc…). One note, the chassis frame had to be trimmed a bit to get the front and rear bumpers to fit close to the body, but it wasn't much to do. I can say that I had a blast putting this together. It has been about 45 years since my last car model and the Revell kit was a fun built and out of the box. I can't say how this kit compares to the AMT version, only that Revell' kit will build into a fine model. I highly recommend this kit to anyone who wants to build a 1957 Chevy Bel Air, any way you want to. I want to thank IPMS/USA and Revell for the chance to review this kit.