The Island Chevy SSR

       

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Original Kit:
Chevy SSR
Made By:
Revell (kit #85-7691)
Scale:
1/25
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Chevy SSR from the movie The Island
The Island Chevy SSR engine The Island Chevy SSR chassis The Island Chevy SSR interior The Island Chevy SSR door The Island Chevy SSR box The Island Chevy SSR rear

 
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After building the Zombieland Escalade and being absolutely blown away by how great the kit was, I wanted to try out a different early '00s Revell kit to see if it was another forgotten gem. While not quite as brilliant as the Caddy, the Chevy SSR is indeed a solid kit that deserves some attention.

Unlike the Cadillac, this is a full detail kit with a complete engine. It's nice to get a representation of GM's 5.3L Vortec 5300 V8, though once assembled there's not a whole lot that you can actually see...much like on the 1:1 SSR. Fit and finish were excellent, as was the assembly of the chassis and interior. The parts were cast sharply and had smart assemblies, making painting a breeze. Since the truck in The Island was supposed to be older and slightly modified I didn't stick strictly to factory specs, but still tried to make the colors and weathering realistic.

The body was the most challenging part of the whole kit, owing entirely to the complex shape of the SSR. Revell chose to make the rockers and rear bumper separate pieces, and while they did an admirable job making everything fit together nicely it was still a group of very complex shapes and somewhat fiddly assembly. I decided to glue the rockers in place before paint, so that I could be sure they lined up properly and had a good strong connection. Unfortunately, this also meant that I had to get clever once it came time to get it over the interior and chassis. The SSR wraps so far in at the bottom that simply spreading the body wasn't enough to get it in place. I needed to give it a little more flex, so I carefully sliced the front and side joints where the box meets the body. This allowed for enough give to drop the body into place, and thanks my cuts being along existing lines (plus being partially hidden by the tonneau cover) they completely disappeared on once everything was painted.

Ah, the paint. While the body was the trickiest part of the kit, the paint job was the toughest part of the overall build. I started with a base of bright red, then spent the next several weeks trying different techniques and mask materials looking for something that would work. The shape of the SSR's front fenders and the delicacy of the flame tips made trying to get something usable and repeatable harder than I expected. After enough trial and error, though, I finally found a method that worked.

My first step was to draw up *just* the door flames, and copy/paste/mirror that to get the other door. I then added some guide lines so I could be sure to locate both sides to the body, and printed a bunch of them onto a sheet of plain paper. One of each side was cut to my guide line, and the back was colored with charcoal to make my own carbon paper. I then applied masking tape across the whole door on each side. placed my templates over the tape, and traced the outlines of the flames with a pencil. This transferred the charcoal onto the masking tape, so when the templates were removed I had the flame patterns drawn directly onto the tape. Then, with a new blade, I carefully cut along these lines. I couldn't afford to mess up here, since I was essentially cutting directly into the painted body. But by going slow and taking enough breaks, I was able to get a pretty decent set of cuts. Pulling off the excess tape revealed a nice clean outline of the door flames.

These were then used as the starting point to mask the front fenders, which were done piece by piece with lots of checks to both the movie screengrabs and the opposite side to make sure both sides matched. The hood flames were asymmetrical on the movie truck, so I drew those freehand before going back with the knife and repeating what I did on the doors.

Once masking was done, the rest of the truck was painted satin black. The masks were removed, a few errant edges were cleaned up, and the whole truck was hit with Dullcote before getting a light weathering.

Aside from the custom paint job, there were a couple of minor modifications needed. The hood scoop is a modified Matchbox truck windshield, the sidepipes were from my parts box, and the wheels were from Revell's Escalade with the stock rear tires and parts box front tires. The girl silhouette on the rear bumper was freehand painted over a piece of BMF, and the license plate was my own custom print.

 

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