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Here’s my AMT 1971 Coca-Cola Shorty Beetle! I have several Coke kits in the stash that will likely not get Coke livery, so I figured I should do at least one with Coke graphics. It was fun picking out which decals to use from this kit’s huge selection of wild “Unity Collection” decals. I love how you can make the body removable so you can see the dune buggy chassis. The red is Krylon’s Apple Red. The kit includes a stock-ish VW dashboard, but the instructions don’t mention where it goes (I think you’re supposed to glue it into the body, but I don’t know how you’d align the steering shaft properly). I cut it down and glued it to the tubular dash structure to give the interior more detail. I could not get those fragile individual exhaust tubes to align properly so I gave up and left them off. The Coke crate comes from the Dodge D-50 Coke kit. The body is painted Testors Extreme Lacquer “Bronze” with the inserts done in Tamiya TS75 “Champagne Gold”. Part fit up is not great. The fragile roll bars are a nightmare to align, the chassis/front suspension ended up warped and the engine cover won’t close. I cut the generator belt/pulleys off and shaved their mounts down to pull it closer to the engine. Both hoods are glued shut. Overall this was a fun kit to build despite its foibles, with lots of customization opportunities. I picked up another one cheap from Ollies that will get a whole different look (eventually).

I think this kit is based upon what remains from the pre-'79 1/25 AMT Ford Pinto annual, when it was customized and releases as the "Pintera"? Some pics of the 1/25 AMT Pintera kit below. Note the long side panel drawing closely matches the Popper's drawing, as pointed out by Rob Hall a few weeks ago:

Sneak peak at the forthcoming 1/25 AMT Fruehauf Model FB Panel Van Trailer in Coca-Cola livery:

This was just a quick, fun, stress free build. I built it box stock and did not sweat the details. She is a 3-footer, not a contest quality build by any means. It is good to just knock out a build and not worry about every little detail. I am a bit of a sucker for Coca-Cola liveries, (when they make sense). I did not do a WIP thread because there really wasn't too much interesting things to post. Hope you enjoy it.