NASCAR Models by Bill Bruins!!!

Kurt Busch's 2004 SHARPIE Taurus

The only redeeming features of this kit is that it has tire decals (even though they are a bit big) complete with the compound "stickers", and I like the removable trunk lid.

That's about all the nice things I can say.

I had a sense of deja vue when I was checking the instruction sheet, so I went through my archives and found the instructions for the two AMT Gordon cars I built more than 10 years ago...other than a few minor changes, the chassis is identical...small, thin '80s style seat, dinky little shifter that's crashed into the dash, no roll bar padding, fuel cell flush with the bottom of the car, a window net that looks like woven wicker, no interior rear-view mirror, there is a hole in the dash top for an Earnhardt bar, but none in the kit(making one was the easiest part of this whole mess), no retaining pins on the trunk lid...the list goes on. There is still a tree of heavily chromed parts in the kit. All the trees were twisted and deformed in the typical AMT way, and even with a lot of coaxing, the chassis would not go together straight and true. The pin and locating hole for the old style two pipe exhaust system has to be knocked off to make it snug up to the bottom of the chassis. There are two oil pans in the kit, and the instructions call for the one with no oil pump or starter. This would have left the oil pump belt hanging in mid-air, so I used the other. When it came time to install the engine, the oil pump ran into the lower crossmember, requiring the last quarter of the pump to be lopped off. The wheel retainers have been updated, molded into a brake disc complete with a calliper, which is a nice touch. Even the painting instructions are out to lunch...it calls for the chassis and roll cage to be painted aluminum and black, even though the pictures on the box show it painted grey.

Then there's the body.

The roof and cowl flaps are way too small, and I pity the gas man if the fuel filler was like this on the real car...it's mounted way too low and almost looks as if it was cast upside down....it just looks funny. Prepping the body wasn't too difficult, the casting lines aren't too heavy, and it doesn't have that silly crease on the front fenders that I've seen on the AMT Monte Carlo kits. I carved off the huge casting for the lower grille opening, and while the rear spoiler supports are a nice addition, they're way too big and just look dumb. There are vent hoses in the car, but no ducts in the windows. There is no driver door duct window, and no mold lines around the outer edges of the glass which requires a lot of fiddly masking to paint the borders. Final assembly requires the body and chassis be glued together. Tamiya gloss black spray paint used as a finish.

The decals are the final insult.

I checked several reference pics, and even though Kurt drove a lot of different paint schemes in 2004, I could find none that matched this kit. The two that were close have different deck lid decals, one being the Nextel champion decal, the other has the Sharpie logo, but it also has several different colored pen tips coming out from the rear spoiler. Both have a Sharpie pen underlining the logo on the hood, and there is a design in the gold on the nose of the real car. It's obvious the nose of the heavily re-touched photo on the box was painted gold, but after several tries, I wasn't able to come up with a match to the side decals. Just as well, the contingency decals aren't separate, and would be a pain to cut out. Besides, I was getting pretty frustrated by this point. The decal across the nose is in two pieces, and requires lots of cutting under the headlights. It almost seemed there was as much adhesive on the top surface as there was on the bottom of the decals as they kept sticking to the tissue when trying to set them down. The big side decals, complete with the numbers and contingencies, needed a careful cut over the Goodyear mark to make them sit down. After all that, the gold on the side decal is darker than the nose, leaving an obvious line. For some reason, the lower two "scribbles" on the passenger side are a totally different shade...and it's all one piece!! Laying down just these four decals took over 4 hours....and they still don't look right. The rest went on fairly easy, but I had to dig through my goodie box to come up with the wheel, window, fire extinguisher and seat decals which aren't in the kit. Even the gauges are just round blanks....Slixx gauge decals are a perfect fit.

I have never really had anything nice to say about Kurt, I think he's loud and arrogant, and kinda stole the championship from it's rightful winner (Go Jeff!!!). Maybe this ordeal was just Kurt's revenge. I really feel "Busch"whacked....."