Ferrari 250 GTO - Fujimi or Revell Germany?

[SfanGoch]

i read the same thing about the body panels. That would counter any criticisms of a particular kit's appearance. They're all correct. 

 

[Ace-Garageguy]

Well, I have a Gunze kit sitting on the bench right next to an Italeri kit. I haven't seen every 250 GTO, but the rear wheel arches on the Gunze aren't like any of the in-person cars or the photos I've seen. The angles of the windshield pillars differ too, and I'm pretty certain these WOULD be the same from real car to car. The Italeri version is slightly more vertical.

The body of the Gunze kit is also slightly wider. For these reasons, I'm using the Gunze kit to represent a what-if hot-rod version that's had its fenders widened, with a smallblock Chebby and a Ford 9" swapped in. The Italeri kit will be represented as-built.

Though much is made of the real cars being hand-built and all different, these things were hammered over carefully constructed wooden bucks by skilled craftsmen, not a bunch of bondo-slinging cowboys. Successive panels, while not identical, would be pretty damm close to each other. They all have to fit the same buck.

                                                                 

Anyone familiar with the alloy-body custom building process will know that there will be detail and minor dimension differences surely, but not huge discrepancies from car to car...as some would have us believe. 

Post-production repairs or running changes shared by several close-together-serial numbered cars I can see as valid reasons for fairly significant differences between two randomly picked cars..

I personally prefer the general lines of the Gunze kit, as it's not as 'squashed' looking forward of the windshield as the other good kits...though the squashed look is apparent on the REAL cars and is probably more correct.  

 

Edited May 26, 2016 by Ace-Garageguy

[keyser]

Actually, no, they're not. The squared off fender openings seen in the Gunze/ recent G-Revell issue are not how these cars were made. They used body bucks to form the panels, but wheel opening shape was consistently round like the Italeri and the Fujimi. I've seen 26 together at one time, and other than some flared lips (still a round radius, they're all the same within a few mm on the originals. What happened after they were repaired is different story. Pourret's GTO book also documents it well. Also, the red used on most of the GTO's was Rosso Cino, Chinese red, not Rosso Corsa. 

Nice builds, nice stash.   

[afx]

Great reference book if you are interested in these cars.  Gives details of every one built.  There is a great story of one the cars ending up in a high school auto shop.

Edited May 26, 2016 by afx

[Exotics_Builder]

Great reference book if you are interested in these cars.  Gives details of every one built.  There is a great story of one the cars ending up in a high school auto shop.

Agreed.  Have one on the shelf with my other Ferrari books.

[Kmb0319]

Makes total sense to me... Thanks, Art.

[afx]

Here is said GTO: chassis 3589 GT owned by Victoria High School 1964 -1972.  Click on the picture to see it full scale. Looks like it might be a Scarab beside it!

Edited May 26, 2016 by afx

[keyser]

Here's a photo of it as raced recently. 

The hood scoops remain, added shortly after delivery. It's grown some very odd indicators since restoration, they weren't there in the above photo. I included photo of 3223 for ref, as it was "first" GTO. The "hard points" are nearly identical, the front fenders in particular on both photos of 3589 and 3223. The roof on the restored 3589 looks flatter as the chrome on the surround is missing or covered. Makes huge difference.

Hard upper line where rear fender meets roof and forward at door is identical, it's the outboard part of rear fender that gets goobered up in rebuilds, and the nose. 3589's nose appears intact too. GTO's didn't have rear spoilers molded in until later. Pourret/Bluemel can give far more details than I. Great book, glad you guys have them. They're getting scarce.

Any excuse to post a GTO   

[Kmb0319]

And... It's black.  

[keyser]

Sadly no, it's really really really dark blue, which is stunning. Was when new. 

The Dyer car was blue from shortly after new. 

None were black as I recall. 

Most Rosso Cina.

Here's a free, but decent reference for those of you without some of the great books. HTH.

http://www.barchetta.cc/All.Ferraris/by-serial-number/ferrari-by-serial-number/model-index-60-64/model-summary/250-gto-index/index.html

Edited May 27, 2016 by keyser
Forgot helpful linky

[aurfalien]

I have this one, its got an engine.  Looks very very cool;

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10082098

[1959scudetto]

No, it is the Protar kit.  It has opening everything (like the old Aurora/Monogram 250ish GTO), but suffers from a too squared back end amongst a couple of other things.  I don't know about the tires in the Revell issue, but the Protar kits were terrible (a problem endemic to them). 
The Italeri and Fujimi are both good.  Adding the HRM aftermarket engine does improve them, but not absolutely necessary.  Lots of Aftermarket stuff for the Fujimi if you are looking for more detail.  I have all of the aforesaid GTO's in my stash, if you have any other questions.

Yes and no, Gerry: the presently available Revell 250 GTO is the reboxed ex-Protar kit (with 4 openings and totally wrong proportions), but in 1988 Revell AG reissued the Italeri/Testors 250 GTO with new decals under # 7293 (I built one back then, but don't have the box any more) - here is a link to one which was on ebay not long ago (7 pics showing the box contents!): http://www.ebay.ie/itm/301935602144 

[niteowl7710]

I have this one, its got an engine.  Looks very very cool;

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10082098

All of the "basic" Fujimi 250 GTOs are the same,  the only difference is the decal sheet. There was also a kit that came with a fret of K.A. Models Photoetch, and another that had turned aluminum wheel sleeves and P/E spokes. Fujimi also at one point sold that wheel set separately.  At the current moment in time only the red box/red car kit is currently in the catalog.

[aurfalien]

All of the "basic" Fujimi 250 GTOs are the same,  the only difference is the decal sheet. There was also a kit that came with a fret of K.A. Models Photoetch, and another that had turned aluminum wheel sleeves and P/E spokes. Fujimi also at one point sold that wheel set separately.  At the current moment in time only the red box/red car kit is currently in the catalog.

Doh, you're right.  I thought mine was special.

Oh hey, it's got blue plastic

 

[Exotics_Builder]

Yes and no, Gerry: the presently available Revell 250 GTO is the reboxed ex-Protar kit (with 4 openings and totally wrong proportions), but in 1988 Revell AG reissued the Italeri/Testors 250 GTO with new decals under # 7293 (I built one back then, but don't have the box any more) - here is a link to one which was on ebay not long ago (7 pics showing the box contents!): http://www.ebay.ie/itm/301935602144 

Yes they did once, but for some reason, the last couple of "reissues" have been the Protar kit. 

[unclescott58]

Here is said GTO: chassis 3589 GT owned by Victoria High School 1964 -1972.  Click on the picture to see it full scale. Looks like it might be a Scarab beside it!

I'm sure a lot of schools wish they had that GTO in their shop. Imagine with what GTOs are worth, selling it would help your school budget a bit.

[89AKurt]

After reading this thread, guess I should throw away these kits and get the Fujimi?

[peteski]

Do whatever you like and build whichever kit you want. It is your model and who cares if others don't like it or that it is not perfectly accurate.

 

Or better yet, get the Fujimi kit and build them all. Then show them as a collection showing difference between all those models. That would make an interesting display (and you have 4 times the fun building them).

[The Junkman]

I've always subscribed to the theory that since each GTO body was fundamentally hand formed (restorers have found substantial differences between right and left sides of the same car) each kit can stand on its own.  Well, except for the Aurora/Monogram conglomeration .  Build what you have, the way you want and let others prove it wrong.  Then ignore them.

Edited May 16, 2017 by The Junkman

[PeeBee]

After reading this thread, guess I should throw away these kits and get the Fujimi?

Yes, definitely throw them away.  You can't sell them; they're not accurate renditions.

Seriously though, I recently bought the Gunze w/engine knowing that the rear fender cut-outs were way off (for any GTO).  The kit I picked up was significantly cheaper than the PE set w/wheels I was considering for my Fujimi GTO, so I figured "...what the heck?," maybe I can use the wheels and PE from the Gunze on my Fujimi.

As it turns out, the Gunze "Borranis" are way too small for the Fujimi Avons so I ordered the Fujimi "15-inch" PE Borranis (you can still get them) w/turned aluminum rims (the Gunze rims are plastic).

And, maybe I'll just go ahead and build the Gunze, anyway, after I fix the rear wheel cut-outs.  The rear valance is much wider than on the Fujimi, too, and I'd have to say that the Fujimi is the more accurate body, by far.  But the Gunze body has a voluptuousness to it that I like. 

These Gunze kits were released, what, 35-40 years ago? It's my guess that the masters of Gunze kits from this era were eyeballed and measured from photos.  It really seems doubtful that they had access to drawings or actual 1/1 cars; other Gunze kits from that era are inaccurate as well.  I have the full-detail XKE and though it's reasonably accurate, more so than any other XKE kit that I've come across, there's still issues.  Funnily enough, the most glaring inaccuracy on the XKE is the upper back arch on the rear fender cut-outs!

Happy modeling!

PB.  

[CAL]

Actually here is the story on the Protar kit, it was modeled off a car that was hit in the rear and the people that put the car back together used some liberties to rebuild the car to improve rear down force by reshaping the rear.

 

The reality is there isn't any 2 250s that are exactly the same and there is maybe only 1 that is unmolested as it came out of the factory.

Edited May 19, 2017 by CAL

[Chuck Kourouklis]

Nobody's said the first thing about throwing away a pre-Fujimi GTO (+Daytona??) stash.  There's a lot more friction than slope between anything anybody has claimed in this thread and such an extreme.

And maybe the point about hand-built car-to-car variations is so obvious that some of us had actually accounted for that before we made our observations?  The rear wheel arches on the Gunze kit just don't match any 1:1 GTO - but even with its broad shoulders and somewhat gangsterish overall take, there's still a lot to like about Gunze's kit.  It's certainly more accurate in proportions than the Protar - sorry, but Violati/3851's deviations don't account for all the ways that particular model goes afield - and waaay ahead of Aurora's earliest-breaking kit, which was not only misproportioned, but ugly.  At least Protar's is still somewhat appealing, if not correct.

For the best mean bi-scale representation among the Series 1 GTOs, Italeri's ever-so-slightly slab-sided body was far and away the best until Fujimi's came along and moved the game on.  I personally think Fujimi's is better even than Model Factory Hiro's recent 1/12 variation (and that's one of my favorite kits ever). 

If somebody showing off a stash of older GTO kits started this thread and a litany of Fujimi GTO posts rained down too late to do him any good, I'd understand the reaction.  But this discussion was started by someone who wanted to know before buying, and the responses have been entirely appropriate to that.

[Matt Bacon]

... I think there may have been irony involved, here and there...

My takeaways from this thread are:

• If you're starting from a stash with no 250GTOs in it, then the best thing to look for is a Fujimi (and I've snagged two for less than £30 in the last couple of years, so they aren't that hard to find)
• If you have some GTOs, then as long as they aren't the Aurora/Monogram version, you have some entirely buildable kits that you might as well get on with.
• If you're going to build one, then there's no point in paying collector prices for any of the older kits -- just find a Fujimi...

best,

M.

[Chuck Kourouklis]

Point taken, but irony is more easily identified if it has a discernible basis.

Great synopsis, though!

Edited May 20, 2017 by Chuck Kourouklis
clarification

[gtx6970]

So, Ive been thinking I would like to build a early GTO some day. Out of the 3 which one is the best one for a shelf model. An opening hood is nice if the V12 is accurate but not mandatory . Im more concerned with overall body shape  . When I look in  the case I want to see a nice looking early Ferrari GTO

 

Italeri ?

Testors ?

Fujimi ?

 

I would prefer a 1/25th scale but it doesnt look like thats possibile .