Ok, so here are all of the parts out of the box:
Also in the kit are:
a catalog (do you know how long it's been since I opened a model kit and found a catalog in it?)
A card that has a pic of the original car on one side and a short story on the back about how it came to be made into a model kit.
A miniature version of the box to display next to the car.
A registration card for their newsletter.
So, I decided to snap the wheels together just so I could say I've started the project. Right away I ran into something unusual for me. Here are the wheels:
The slicks on the back have two piece hubs, as usual. However the back piece has plastic in the way. You have to cut the center of the back piece out for the front piece to fit. This is probably no big deal for a bunch of you, but I was out of the game for a good long while, and I don't recall a setup like this even when I was building a lot. Of course back then I mostly built airplanes and spaceships.
Looks like I'll need to sand the interior of that ring before I make it permanent. I wish the wheels on all of my kits looked this good. The detail is really good, and the white lettering is fantastic.
I picked this kit up in part because it was sale priced. It's very difficult to get one of the other kits when they cost twice or more than this one did. Especially since I'm wanting to buy level 3 kits for the extra details. Those get pricey fast. This one won me over also because it is supposed to feature turning front wheels. That will be fun to work with. I drove home yesterday thinking about all the different ways I could finish this project. Now I'm thinking of doing the red, but trying again to use that metallic red that gave me so much trouble on the nomad. I may be inclined to replace the pencil thin trim decals with a white flame pattern , but I don't know for sure yet. Worse comes to worse, I take the paint off and do it in regular red like I did with the nomad, but if I don't try, I'll never figure out how to make it work. After all, I always try to learn something new with each project.
I do plan on wiring the engine. The last wiring job was so much fun, (after the first wire was done, anyway) that I want to do it again. I've looked up pics of the original dragster, and have a pretty good idea of how to run the wires so they don't stand up in the air like they did on my last project.
Something else that surprises me is the size of the kit. It is a 1/25 model, but it looks to be about half the size of my other 1/24 kits. Here's the frame of this kit compared to my cobra (my smallest kit yet) and nomad (my largest) models:
That's where I stand at the moment.