Revell 1/25 Tom 'Mongoose' McEwen '75 Plymouth Duster Funny Car

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Tom McEwen, (born 1937) is an American drag racer, who won the U.S. Nationals during part of his 45 year career. He is listed as number 16 of the 50 most significant drivers of NHRA’s first 50 years. He received the nickname "the Mongoose" in 1964 from engine builder Ed Donovan. It was largely originally used as a device to entice Don "the Snake" Prudhomme into a high-exposure match race, McEwen won only five NHRA national events during his 45-plus-year career. McEwen’s gift for gab and promotional ability made him one of the sport's most influential and controversial figures.

As stated by famous drag racer, Roland Leong in the book SNAKE vs. MONGOOSE, “McEwen was the smartest of the bunch. When he came up with the Hot Wheels deal using the Snake and Mongoose characters, it shook the world of drag racing big time. He produced a sponsorship package that allowed him and Prudhomme to buy the best equipment, pay expenses, make money and sell their image all over the United States. I hate to admit it but McEwen and Prudhomme showed us the way to the future. They were a lot smarter than most of us who didn't see past the end of the quarter-mile.”

In 1972, McEwen won his first major event when he dominated the Top Fuel field at the Bakersfield March Meet. A year later, he scored his first NHRA national event victory by topping the quickest Funny Car field in history at the SuperNationals at California's Ontario Motor Speedway. Tom went on to win four more national events, including his dramatic U.S. Nationals Funny Car victory over Prudhomme in 1978, following the death just a few days earlier of his son, Jamie. He also won the prestigious Big Bud Shootout in 1984 and won Top Fuel at the 1991 Summernationals.

Tom McEwen retired in 1992.

This kit was new mold in 2010 and from the look of things, it is such that the chassis can be used by several other body types with only a single sprue and the body needing to be adjusted from car to car. This makes perfect sense as many of the funny cars of the era used similar if not identical chassis.

Like the much earlier designed sprint car I built a while back, this one has pretty much a one piece molded frame, making construction a lot easier. Many of the frame members are half round, probably to make molding or installing parts easier. Not exactly prototypical, but few will be fussing about it. The kit comes with a full engine that is detailed enough for th emajority of builders. Tires are rubber or vinyl and well formed.

As mentioned, the chassis is pretty well formed needing only to have a few braces, fuel tank, wheelie bars, axle housing and some other bits attached to it. The steering system is properly complex and well molded as is the front suspension. There are inner chassis panels and an additional roll bar for the driver's area. The body is nicely done with a separate nose and tail section. The inner cockpit shroud on my kit was rather badly warped. Hopefully hot air from a hair dryer or boiling water will be able to straighten this piece out to where it is usable. I was surprised that there is a bit of flash on a few parts and the mold seams on the body are quite prominent so much prep work will be needed to remove these. Most of the parts will have to be pre-painted before attaching, the body itself requiring an overall white coat with the upper half red, lower blue and a large white area on the rear. The chrome is quite well done, though when removing seams, it will pretty much require repainting the parts. Many of the 'chrome' bits that model car folks provide are often aluminum anyway.

Decals are nicely printed, and I'm sure the underlying red and blue will bleed through a bit as they have on other Revell kit decals I've used. Unlike many of their aircraft kits, the decals are not Cartograf printed, leaving me to think that perhaps car modelers are not as fussy about decals as airplane builders. The instructions are superb not only because of their clear drawings, but because every part is identified and the color of the part is given.

Step one is to straighten out the warped part and start the tedious job of scraping and cleaning up seams. Actually, this latter task is pretty much on-going throughout the build as it helps to keep one from losing parts and cuts down on the tedium of this someone onerous task.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_McEwen

2011