KIT:

AMT Amtronic

KIT #

30273

PRICE:

$13.25

DECALS:

None

REVIEW &
PHOTOS :

Scott Van Aken

NOTES:

Reissue

HISTORY

Not really too sure what to say about this kit. The instructions are totally devoid of any information on it. All I could find was a few lines on the side of the box. It says "Two cars in one; ultra-high speed inter-city transport and in-town runabout. This is the early '70's idea of futuristic 21st Century transportation.  Rear drive turbine engine, computer panel." Not sure about the rear drive computer panel, but the rest seems about right. 

What you get are really a combo car. If you saw the movie 'Thunderball' there was a ship that did this. It was a large cruising boat that had the front end breakaway. That is this vehicle. There are two turbine engines; one front and one rear. Each has a large fan that is on the bottom of the car. The very front wheels appear to be able to retract into the nose section when the two parts are connected together. The rear passenger compartment holds four, with two sets of seats that face each other. Not sure how comfy I'd be traveling backwards. Had to do it in military aircraft and did not like it.

THE KIT

As is now typical with AMT kits (which are all built in China nowadays) the packaging is superb. All the chrome bits are bagged separately as is the main body and all the clear bits. The rest of the pieces are in another bag. There are a LOT of parts to this model. They suggest it to be a skill level 2, but from the looks of things, I think a 3 would be more appropriate as there are 150 parts. The molding of the parts is good with almost no flash, though ejector pin marks are plentiful. Remember, this is a reissue of a 1969 kit. In fact, the first reissue of this interesting model. 

There are a lot of clear parts, as you can see from the image to the right. I have left them in their bag to keep them from being scratched. You can see the amount of clear in the kit from the box art. There are also two sprues of chrome bits. Much of this is for wheels and the two turbine engines. Most of us will remove the chrome (break out the Strip-A-Kit) and paint these parts aluminum. The chrome is very well done and there was no sign of it flaking off the parts as has been the case of kits in the past.

Other parts include the six rubber tires, two of which are quite small and the others of a very low profile. There are also the usual tail lights and (not shown) a small bag of  metal pins. These are for attaching the wheels and the cooling fans.

The instructions are of the drawing type and are quite adequate to be able to build the kit. It is broken down into 11 construction steps. One builds the forward section first and then moves on to the aft passenger compartment. What is completely missing from the instructions are any kind of painting information. Surely this was present in the original boxing of the kit and for there not to be a guide of any type is not what I would expect from a company that has been around as long as AMT. 

Aside from that, the kit looks very nice indeed. It hardly looks like a 30 year old mold and is a kit that many have been waiting for. I can only hope that AMT will come out with more of these oldies. 

Here is a link showing the original boxing of the kit. 

http://www.showrods.com/showrod_pages/amtronic.html
http://www.greysteele.com/models/amtronic.htm

Review kit courtesy of me and my wallet!

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