Revell

1/25 2008 Shelby GT500KR

Kit Number: 85-4226

Reviewed by Steve Jahnke, IPMS #34991

116 pieces molded in white, grey, black, chrome-plated, and clear MSRP: $21.95 Website: www.revell.com Ford brought the Shelby GT500KR name plate back to life in 2008 for the 40th anniversary of the original "King of the Road" (KR), the 1968 Shelby GT500KR. The '08 GT500KR was developed by Ford's in-house performance arm SVT to be the most powerful factory produced Mustang ever. The GT500KR came from the factory packing 550 horsepower and over 510 foot pounds of Detroit torque. By comparison the 1968 GT500KR was powered by a naturally aspirated 428 cubic inch motor, factory rated at 335HP, but in reality made more than 400 horses and 440-foot pounds torque. That's a lot of Dearborn muscle. The Kit Our subject kit comes from Revell packaged in their "Special Edition" series and serves as a trilogy to the 2006 Hertz Shelby GT-H and the 2007 Shelby GT500 kits preceding it. To a Mustang fan such as me, there cannot be too many Mustangs kits available; no snickers from my fellow armor and aircraft modeler friends out there. As I have said in previous Revell kit reviews, this kit is very well engineered and executed. The parts are well molded with very little clean up and the decal sheet is marvelous; I encountered absolutely no problems laying down the 7 piece silver body stripes. The Build I like painting car bodies so that is where this build started. I had a bottle of Leon Tefft's Cobra Colors Ford Vista Blue Metallic in my paint stash that was laid down after priming the body pieces and chassis pan with Plasticote gray sandable primer. After looking at the limited range of interior colors for a Vista Blue exterior, I decided to use my modeling prerogative and go with a non-stock black with red insert interior. Next up was the motor build. My only gripe with the instructions are that some of the paint call outs are incorrect, however a little searching on the internet yielded great results from a site called Muscluarmustangs.com. I found an old bottle of Floquil Antique Bronze 110106 that matched the color of the valve covers and supercharger, and offered a nice contrast to the all aluminum color of the rest of the engine.

The chassis is nicely done and easy to assemble; I painted most of the parts per the call outs but went for Ford blue rear shocks and antique bronze for the rear axle front cover, again for a little contrast and interest. I painted the molded in catalytic converter heat shields with fresh Testors chrome silver and the gas tank shields with a dark gray. I did run into an issue with the heavy wheels falling off of the car. To remedy this I should have attached and super glued the pin and wheel retainer from step 9 to the axle stubs in step 5 and then super glued the wheel hub assembly to the retainer along with the disc brakes. The interior was very straight forward; I painted the side panels and seats with a coat of Krylon Poppy red enamel followed by hand painting the rest in Tamiya semi-gloss black and then topped off with a coat of Testors Acryl semi-gloss clear finish give everything an even tone. The shift lever knob on the real KR is the size and color of a cue-ball, our kit mimics the same large knob, complete with a 6 speed shift pattern decal for the ball, I used a decal softener to ensure that the decal would snuggle over the que-ball contours. The body was ready for the stripe decals, I found that they went on effortlessly and like the other GT500 review, decal #2 had to be trimmed so it would tuck into the lower grill cavity. I used Solveset to make sure decals 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7 snuggled over the bumpers and spoiler. Conclusion Revell has another Mustang hit here. The kit is easy enough that any modeler with beginning to intermediate skills can produce a nice model, while experienced modelers will find this kit responds very well to detail painting and produces a excellent finished representation of the King of the Road. Thanks to Revell for supplying this kit, and to IPMS/USA for allowing me to review it for you.