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| The Desert Dodge was the cover story on the Sept '72 issue of Car Model |
Back in September I was thinking about the Javelin AMX custom model car - the so-called Ghost Dancer - built by Hank Borger that appeared in the January 1973 issue of Car Model magazine. Back in the early '70s I was in awe of that rear-engine customization based on AMT's Mark Donohue Javelin kit with some parts from Jo-Han's Cadillac hearse and Rambulance kits thrown in. I thought if by some miracle I stumbled across the Javelin kit at the September model show for a reasonable price I'd buy it and finally build the Ghost Dancer.
No such luck. Even if I did see the kit the internet tells me it would cost a small fortune and I wouldn't be inclined to customize it.
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| 12 year old me thought this thing was cool; 60+ me isn't so sure |
But, the other project I had in mind as I was dancing with ghosts in my memory was the Desert Dodge customization that appeared in the September 1972 issue of Car Model. That one I did have a go at building way back in the summer of '72. Well, to say I built it is a bit of a stretch. I bought the base kit, MPC's 1972 Dodge pickup, called the Baja-Brute as the kit was configured for off-road racing in Mexico. I raised the body a bit and painted it yellow, but that was it for customizing. I had no source for the parts required, no specialized tools for customizing work, and, probably most importantly, no nerve to cut up a new kit. But, I loved that article and read it many times. For some reason I think I really liked the idea that something commonplace could be transformed into something unique. I also think it primed me for E. L. Moore's projects that I 'discovered' the following summer since customization is just one step away from scratchbuilding. In my mind E. L. Moore and custom cars are forever linked. Strange, but true.
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| It's only 2 pages of instructions, but I think it's a little more involved than we're lead to believe. |
Tackling this project today wouldn't involve tracking down rare kits as long as I wasn't a stickler for 100% authenticity. If all I wanted to do was go through all the construction steps as laid out in the article to see if 12 year old me could have done them, and end up with something much closer to the customization spelled out there than 12 year old me produced back in '72, then I could proceed.
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| The new kits + the bag of surviving parts from the '72 build |
MPC recently released kits of a '78 Dodge pickup and the so-called Dodge Warlock. I think they're re-pops, but don't quote me on that. Yeah, the '78 body isn't exactly the same as the '72, but it's close. There're enough parts between the two to provide most of what I'll need. Also, I have a small zip-lock bag of parts from my '72 build that survived the decades scattered in my ancient spares box.
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| In case you were wondering where the train content is, it's up there :-) |
It's amazing some parts from the first build survived because the completed model didn't. Sometime in the mid-70s it experienced a horrible kitbashing accident and got turned into the monster in the above photo. Warning: trains, monster trucks, unsuspecting plastic model kits, and teenage ineptitude don't mix. I wish the hood had survived as it's an interesting shape and will be hard to duplicate.
I think the first job will be to cut the roof off the cab. It's sort of a psychological barrier that I couldn't overcome back then, but shouldn't be a problem now. And I've got two cabs incase a major screwup occurs.
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