Have just spent some time comparing the Revell and AMT (yeah, I know it's supposedly a '72, but it's the same basic car) bodies with some good photos of real cars.
The wheel openings on the Revell kit have bothered me since this kit was introduced. So much so that I was considering grafting the wheel openings from the AMT body into the Revell body, which would be a buttload of work.
The problem with the Revell wheel openings are that they are straight-flat across the top (or nearly so), and they shouldn't be. The opening shape is curved all the way around. The rears are worse than the fronts, but the fronts have the problem too.
The AMT rear wheel openings are too rounded--the left side especially, the right side is much better and almost correct. The AMT front wheel openings are darn near right on the money.
The Revell body wheel openings look much bigger than the AMT's (front to back), but they're actually almost identical in size to the AMT's.
At this point, I THINK that the easiest/simplest way to get an acceptable appearance (not necessarily 100% accurate) on the wheel openings is to carefully sand a little bit of a curve into the top edge of the opening. It looks like there is just enough "meat" in the flare to accomodate this, and it looks like it won't take much of a change of this contour to effect a notable improvement in appearance.
Elsewhere: The Revell body has a semi-sharp crease or ridge running down the body sides at midline. The AMT's ridge here is much softer and less distinct. The Revell crease might be just a hair too sharp but it's much closer to correct than AMT's.
Then, of course, the whole rear taillight panel of the Revell kit is wrong, sitting vertically as it does instead of having the correct "undercut" or "backslant" as does the AMT body. I was originally thinking of chopping off the whole rear 1/2 inch or so of the AMT body and grafting it onto the Revell body, but the Revell body is so much wider than the AMT that this isn't a good solution to the problem. I'm now looking at seeing if I can just fit the whole AMT rear panel and bumper into the Revell body. This won't be 100% accurate either but will still look much better than the stock Revell parts.
More to come....
Rudolf Schoeller Rob Schroeder Michael Schumacher Ralf Schumacher
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