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NASCAR MODELS by MR NASCAR Matt Kenseth's 2004 SMIRNOFF ICE Taurus

This colour scheme is a departure from Matt's familiar orangy-yellow and black DeWalt colour scheme. It was run in several races in 2004, including the Coca Cola 600 in May, in which the car was liveried as shown on this model.

2004 was Matt's year as the Reigning Champion, and as such, he was a force to be dealt with on the tracks in most races, although he was pretty well out of the limelight, considering his situation, off the track. (Or maybe that's just the impression from up here in the GWN - home of hockey - remember that? - and Ron Fellows) Not since Bobby Labonte have we had such a quiet, soft-spoken Champion! But Matt has proven himself on the track - where it counts.

I had recieved the graphics package for the SMIRNOFF car from Sam in about October of 2004, and was gung-ho to start it; until I looked at the 2004 Taurus vs the existing approx 2000-vintage kit that was available, and was less enthusiastic. My thinking was to wait a month or so until R-M released the promised updated Taurus kit.

Well, when that got shelved until late '05 - if ever - I decided to have a go at the conversion myself. It took me until about November to come up with something I was happy with, then, after all that work, I decided to have some resin copies made, as there are a number of interesting '04 Tauri out there. So I tootled off to neighbouring Whitby, to have Randy Frost of Perry's Resin cast me up a few. (I also by then had thought about making them available to anyone interested.)

Randy looked at my work, looked at me, rolled his eyes, and said "leave it with me - I'll just tidy it up a bit..." Unfortunately, at about that time, my hood had started to take on strange new contours. In my haste to come up with something, I had filled some areas with plastic and plastic cement, and now things were shrinking and warping. After two or three weeks of effort to fix my mess, Randy finally modified and cast up one of his own for me. By now it was end of November.

For personal reasons, the Taurus was suddenly very low on my priority list by then, and it wasn't until about the third week in December that I finally got a complete resin body from Randy. With Holidays, etc, it was just finished the weekend of January 8th, in time for the January Group 25 Club meeting in Toronto. It's amazing how time, and windows of opportunity, can slip away...

Anyhoo - here is what I suspect is the only built-up 2004 Taurus kit in the world!! It is, of course, based on the R-M glue kit, and uses the chassis from that kit. The build was identical to the kit instructions, except that I subbed the resin body and hood - and I didn't forget to place the MSD ignition boxes on the RHS of the dash! (I had to scavenge these from another kit - the '00 glue kit does not have them!)

Body prep was straightforward. It took about 20 minutes to clean up flash from the windows and grille area, and I was ready to go. I cleaned the body in warm water vigourously with a toothbrush and dishwashing detergent, and then blew on a couple light coats of PlastiKote Grey Primer from a rattle-can warmed in hot tapwater. By keeping these first coats nice and dry, I avoided potential crawling and fish-eyeing that could result from any mold release agent left on the body. After a light scuff-sand, I laid down a couple medium coats, then wetsanded it with 1500-grit until it was smooth. At this point, I fabricated hood tether anchor plates from thin plastic, and glued them in place, and drilled holes to accept Replicas and Miniatures photo-etched hoodpins. I had left these off my original modified hood, and Randy followed suit on his version. It adds a couple steps, but makes it easier to paint and polish the hood, and the R&M bits ar a HUGE improvement over the kit's molded-in pins!

With those items finished (including holes in decklid!) I proceeded to the painting process. Since the whole car is black, this was, as they say up here in La Belle Province, "un morceau de gateau"!! A couple light coats of good old TAMIYA TS14 Gloss Black from a warmed (hot tapwater) rattlecan, a light sanding, a couple of medium coats, and it was ready for decalling!

Sam provided a great set of graphics, very complete for the car as it ran at Charlotte. I took it one step further, and added the fender contingencies to it as they were in references from the race. Thus, everything for the car is on the sheet, except the NASCAR A-pillar decals, which are on the kit sheets. Oh yeah - and the GOODYEAR logos, as I cleverly bought an 04-release M&M's car for the project... (By the way - I got some very nice sheets of those from BSR - give William a call if you are running low...)

As well, when I made the body mods, I left the front grille open, so I installed a piece of photoetch grille in there for increased realism.

As is my normal practice, once all the decals were in place, and had had 24 hours or so to dry, I applied successive light coats of TS13, again from warmed rattle-can, and after a day of two to dry, I polished it all up with terry cloth and Turtle Wax to a nice shine.