1/25 AMT/Model King 1975 Laguna S-3 Stock Car

Gallery Article by Scott Millican - Elm City Hobbies on Aug 27 2012

 

When building this kit, I set out to create a scale copy of a car of one of my favorite NASCAR drivers, good 'ole DW, or Darrell Waltrip to the uninitiated. The kit starts out as the Model King re-release of the ages old AMT kit. Model King released 4 of these kits, along with this one there is also the 1972 Monte Carlo, 1971 Cyclone and the '74 Gran Torino. This one being the '75 Laguna, it shares most of the same parts as the other 3 kits, save for the body and body parts. Because of this, the chassis is actually made up of 2 parts that slide together, and right out of the gate you have to get the parts lined up to match the wheelbase of the kit you are building.

 

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The kit itself I built mostly OOB, the only exception are the wheels and tires. The kit wheels and tires that come with the kit are slightly too small looking for the the car, as well they come with the older pattern tires that had sort of a tread to them, which if used would have to be sanded down quite a bit as the tread pattern is very prominent. By 1976 (which is the year of this car and markings) NASCAR had switched to the Goodyear slick racing tire. So I replaced the kit wheels and tires with units from a more modern Monogram 1/24 NASCAR kit, and as can be seen in the photos, they do a much better job a filling out the wheel wells. Raised lettering was hand painted with Vallejo white paint. Vallejo being an acrylic paint, it actually dried on the tire (unlike an enamel paint which has been known to stay tacky on these types of tires). It wasn't until I had the tires painted and mounted on the chassis that it struck me that while NASCAR had switched to the Goodyear slick racing tires, the Goodyear Eagle tires weren't around then. So in hindsight, I should have scraped off the raised "Eagle" lettering, however while inaccurate, I think makes the tires look good!

Down to the painting. Gloss white, one of the hardest colors on the planet to paint, and to have it come out looking good and even. And, to top it off...the kit plastic was also white. So what to do. I had remembered reading about this quandary on another website, and the solution at the time was to paint it using white primer, and then gloss coat it. So that is what I did, using Vallejo White Primer, and painted the body. Lucky enough the paint was a stark white, while the plastic was a slight off white, so there was enough of a color difference to be able to see it while painting. Once the white primer was dry, I hit the kit with 3 light coats of Future, and then a 4th heavier coat of Future and allow it to dry. Once all that was dry, I laid down the Powerslide decals, and then once the decals were all dry, did another 2-3 light coats of Future, and then a final heavier coat to bring out the gloss. The kit isn't perfect, but I think it came out well, and represents well one of the iterations of the car that Darrell Waltrip drove in 1976 for the Digard Racing team.

Scott Millican - Elm City Hobbies

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Photos and text © by Scott Millican - Elm City Hobbies