Building a midget racer

Building the Midget from Revell

By Jack Mugan

I have always had a soft spot for the midget race cars ever since I was a kid. Seeing them roar around the dirt tracks, the drivers fighting the wheel, rear ends hanging out and dirt flying everywhere. As with any open-wheel racing, there were

plenty of spectacular wrecks as cars often became airborne.

During the 1930's, Frank Kurtis was designing and building midget

race cars and produced over 1,100 cars over a twenty year period. Frank's racers won countless race events all over the country for decades and is still running strong in vintage events today.

Monogram had the only plastic kit of the midget racer for years and it was released many times over time, but at last there is a new issue of this great form of racing.

Needless to say I wasted little time to getting the first offering onto the workbench. As a bonus,

Revell has included a nice little two wheeled trailer to haul the midget behind your favorite truck.

The midget comes with a removable hood, a highly detailed 90hp Edelbrock V-8 flathead along with vintage style decals and optional trim and numbers.

The kit goes together nicely. As you can see I painted the parts as I went along.

I used some thin solder for the plug wires which worked out fine. There is a great

looking dashboard with nice decals for the gauges. I wish they had done more with the gold on the numbers however. I chose to use the larger grill on my model, but in hindsight, I wish I had used the smaller one provided in the kit. The silver finish on the wheels was not to my liking as it was kind of a poor finish to my eye, so I painted the wheels black and applied Alclad Chrome.

I thought the windscreen was a bit thick so I exchanged it with a vacuum formed replacement. This was a quick fun build and except for the plug wires and seat belts, it's right out of the box. I can't wait to start on the second kit from Revell of the “Offy” version.

4 additional images. Click to enlarge.