Guest Spot: Big Block Laurie’s ’67 Charger

A real '67 Charger lays rubber at the strip

While working on a ’68 Dodge Charger for a friend (see this post), I discovered that one of my colleagues also has fine taste in muscle cars and, after a modelling layoff of many years, had begun to accumulate a few muscle cars kits to build. Big Block Laurie (so named on this blog for his affection for proper, mountain-motored muscle machines) had decided to revisit a long-ago started 1/25-scale Revell ’67 Dodge Charger and having just completed it, he has kindly agreed to share some photos for this blog. So, we go straight from a street ’68 Charger to a strip ’67 Charger!

Big Block Laurie encountered one or two problems during this build, though they are the kind of pitfalls that spring up for model builders regardless of whether they have been away from the hobby for 10 years or 10 minutes. The big one, and this is often a subject of concern for car modellers, was the paintwork. He chose to use aerosol paint and starting off with blue acrylic, didn’t get the finish he wanted. A metallic blue followed (after much sanding) before being itself over-coated with the dazzling red you see in the photos. Despite the paintwork woes, I think the finish on this charger is very nice and worth the work that went into it.

One problem with long-term builds is that parts go missing, and the Charger’s doorhandles seem to have disappeared for good. Having also had trouble with the flimsy wiper mouldings, Laurie decided to do without those stock parts and build the car as a dedicated strip machine. Together with its 426 hemi V8, tall drag slicks and open headers (manifolds in the UK) this Charger is a quarter-mile machine which would certainly annoy anybody’s neighbours – and probably break their windows – so is best kept for the drag strip.

Though the drivetrain is very definitely geared for competition, the Charger’s interior has been left factory stock apart from a dash-mounted tachometer, which together with its garish racing decals, makes it typical of a weekend drag car from the 1970s. Another problem encountered during the final stages of the build was with the stripe decals: being flat, decals don’t like being made to follow bodywork contours, and Laurie found that the hood stripes broke up a little when they were made to fit over the hood scoop.

The ’67 looks great with its racing decals (these stickers often come free with real performance parts for racers to apply to their cars) and you can see a nice spray of black rubber along the bottom of both rear quarter panels, suggesting a build-up of tyre rubber accumulated during numerous burnouts and launches at the strip. You will also notice that the front grill has been washed over with black paint to accentuate the grill pattern and give a more lifelike appearance.

I understand that the ’67 Dodge Charger kit dates from around 2000 and as such, has nice detail and goes together pretty well. Certainly the rear end looks nice, with the full-width chrome trim with translucent red plastic infill, and the engine bay and interior also bear close inspection. Though Laurie was concerned about his skills after a lengthy break from the hobby, the end result shows that he has real ability and obviously knows how to turn out a good-looking drag car. Certainly, touches like the fine black wash on the grill and the rubber marks on the rear fenders are well executed and not the work of an amateur. Laurie already has plans to crack on with another muscle car kit from his cupboard, most likely a Chevy Nova, and I look forward to seeing some photos of his next 1/4-mile killer. Keep watching for more of Big Block Laurie’s work.