KOENIG SPECIALS 911 Turbo

[mrm]

I had to take a little break from my Pagani build for two reasons. First of all it did not stop raining for few days and so I don't lose my mind. So I could not stay idle and had to work on something else and I looked in my case with finished models, where they share space with some rojects in various stages of finish, awaiting their turn. Most are Hot Rods, but since I'm in the exotic mood, this little Porsche caught my eye It has been 95% finished for the longest time, but it needed its mirrors, door handles - one of which I knew I broke in half, it's windshield wipers, exhaust tips and license plate. That last item is a necessety, because it looks mighty awful without it. The problem is that this model was almost finished over three years ago, before my move from Colorado and I had no idea where all those parts were. So, I spent the better half of two days going through boxes and looking in weird places to see what I find. Miraculously I found the micro pieces of the broken door handle and the good one, both painted in matching yellow, together with the mirrors and wipers. The craziest ting was that I found the decal sheet in some completely irrelevant box, which made a huge difference for the dash and added the windshield banner. The interior mirror came from the parts box. The e-brake and the shifter were found too in their plain white plastic. The license plate came from the parts box also and the exhaust tips which are probably forever lost, I cut from aluminum tubing. 

   To sum it up:

It's a Fujimi Koenig Specials Porsche 911 Turbo

Paint is PPG original Lamborghini tri-coat, called Giallo Horus. 

The seats came from a Fujimi Koenig Specials Testarossa Spider, which got accidentally destroyed for the most part, so it donated some of its organs. The belts are artist's tape, which was painted gloss black. I would normally not do gloss on belts, but I needed contrast with the flat black. When the interior is enclosed it looks perfect. 

The license plate and it's decal is I believe from Revell's Audi R8.

So, except for the seats, it's basically a box stock build. 

I hope you like it. 

[unclescott58]

Wow! A stunning build. Very nice. 

[Nacho Z]

Whoa! That is gorgeous! Beautiful color, very fitting on this.

[mrm]

3 hours ago, unclescott58 said:

Wow! A stunning build. Very nice. 

Thank you Scott

[mrm]

2 hours ago, Nacho Z said:

Whoa! That is gorgeous! Beautiful color, very fitting on this.

Thank you. I don’t even recall how I end up having this color. But I figured this model was perfect platform to try it on. That I do remember. 

[Kah puts]

That's one fine looking P car..

[TransAmMike]

Yep, thats a looker!!   I too like the color👌

[ybsluos]

Michael, 

thank you for posting this. It makes me wanna dig mine out and start working on it. I lived in Germany in the mid-80s for a couple years and I saw a couple of Koenig 928 S4s on the streets.   One actually Buzz passed us on the autobahn doing about 150 mph.  The Porsche was doing 150, we were putting along at 85!  
Also back in 1998 when I was visiting my sister just outside of Charleston South Carolina I was sitting in my 85 Olds at a light when a TwinTurbo Koenig Testarossa pulled up next to me. I gave the guy the thumbs up so when the light went green he jumped on it for my benefit and took off!  So I will always have a soft spot for Koenigs.  Your build is amazing.  -Mark

 

[Rich Chernosky]

Yep...its a beauty. Really like the interior, well thought out. 

[ChrisR]

very nice!

[Wolf]

Whoa, that baby pops!
 

Stunning colour and not an easy one to paint. Well done Michael. She looks fast just standin’ still.
 

I remember a Porsche like this coming up fast behind me on the autobahn while I was driving from Mainz to Jever back in 2000. A couple of flashes of the headlights and it was gone like I was standing still. I was doin’ 160 kmph, the max allowable speed rating for the tires on my car! Damn!

Cheers,     
Wolf

[Tommy124]

Fantastic build! IMHO this Fujimi kit is a not too great depiction of a car that in itself is not the definition of beauty. As a result, many (most) builds I have seen of this kit looked rather... let's say "average". But such a monster should not look average, it needs to stand out! And that is just what your model does, in every department! Very well done. Just one (smallest) bit of criticism: if you have a car with a French registration, it needs to have plates on both ends. Well, maybe the front plate just went off while doing more than 300 km/h on the Autobahn! 😄

Edited August 11, 2022 by Tommy124

[radiohd10]

very very nice

[cobraman]

Very sharp, well done !

[Bruce Scully]

A super nice build , that looks great .

[Street Rod]

Great build! The yellow really suits the car. Interior details are very good. I like it!

[PappyD340]

Very nice!

[Speedpro]

Beautiful! Nice paint. looks very smooth. Are those Bbs wheels? They look really good on this 911.

Speedpro

[slusher]

Very sharp Porsche!

[mrm]

On 8/10/2022 at 8:21 PM, Kah puts said:

That's one fine looking P car..

Thank you Glen.

On 8/10/2022 at 8:22 PM, TransAmMike said:

Yep, thats a looker!!   I too like the color👌

Thanks Mike

 

[mrm]

On 8/10/2022 at 10:52 PM, ybsluos said:

Michael, 

thank you for posting this. It makes me wanna dig mine out and start working on it. I lived in Germany in the mid-80s for a couple years and I saw a couple of Koenig 928 S4s on the streets.   One actually Buzz passed us on the autobahn doing about 150 mph.  The Porsche was doing 150, we were putting along at 85!  
Also back in 1998 when I was visiting my sister just outside of Charleston South Carolina I was sitting in my 85 Olds at a light when a TwinTurbo Koenig Testarossa pulled up next to me. I gave the guy the thumbs up so when the light went green he jumped on it for my benefit and took off!  So I will always have a soft spot for Koenigs.  Your build is amazing.  -Mark

 

Thank you for the kind words, Mark. 

I have a soft spot for Koenig Specials too. Right after the Iron Curtain tumbled in '89, my family immigrated in Switzerland. My grandfather had done that back in '69 and my dad has a half brother that is Swiss and only a couple years older than me. His dream was to work with military helicopters, which in Switzerland were unicorns at the time and to get such a job was quite the achievement. Fresh out of high school, he's plan was to get a job with as a mechanic with some high tech machines and he got hired in an exotic car dealership owned by his buddy's dad. He brought me to their showroom, where they had an all white Ferrari 308 by Koenig with a single turbo. He talked a lot of trash about the car, complaining that it is a poorly made plastic junk. I was shocked, because in my teenage mind, coming fresh from the eastern block where outdated soviet BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH was the norm, this white Ferrari was the automotive equivalent of the Millenium Falcon. We moved to live in Lausanne, which is in the French part of Switzerland, away from my uncle, who lived in Wohlen near Zurich, which is in the German region of Switzerland. In Lausanne, by the lake was located a very posh hotel and Ferraris and Lambos were a common site. The little Ferrari service in a near by side street helped with getting familiar with prancing horses, as the mechanics actually enjoyed my enthusiasm and company and let me loiter around the cars in the shop. 

  And then my dad took us to the Geneva Auto Salon, which was a couple hours drive from us. Then I saw the Koenig booth and my jaw hit the floor. The crowd around his display was quite thick, but I managed to elbow my way through to the front to try to get a picture of the insane 1000 horse power, widest car ever, wide body, Testarossa based, twin turbo Koenig Specials Competition Evolution. To my disbelief, Willy König (he added the "e" to his name to differentiate his company from other tuners with the same last name as his) showed up and actually picked me and asked me if I would like to come on the stage for a closer look at the car. I got to sit in it, which at 15 years of age almost made me pee myself with excitement and to top it off I got a brochure, a poster and a little Lapel pin of his KS logo. That lapel pin mysteriously disappeared some years later, the poster has gone in the trash long ago and I am not sure if any of my pictures have survived. 

   I am aware of few twin turbo Testarossas in US, but none of them were Koenig Specials. It would be interesting to find out if any Competitions are still in US. Most of them have found their way to Japan, where they are crazy about Anything Koenig Specials. 

[mrm]

On 8/10/2022 at 11:59 PM, Rich Chernosky said:

Yep...its a beauty. Really like the interior, well thought out. 

Thank you, Rich.

On 8/11/2022 at 5:40 AM, ChrisR said:

very nice!

Thank you, Chris

On 8/11/2022 at 6:44 AM, Wolf said:

Whoa, that baby pops!
 

Stunning colour and not an easy one to paint. Well done Michael. She looks fast just standin’ still.
 

I remember a Porsche like this coming up fast behind me on the autobahn while I was driving from Mainz to Jever back in 2000. A couple of flashes of the headlights and it was gone like I was standing still. I was doin’ 160 kmph, the max allowable speed rating for the tires on my car! Damn!

Cheers,     
Wolf

Thanks, Wolf.

Yeah, there is no cruizin' in the left lane in Germany, like here. There is no driving discipline in US. 

[mrm]

On 8/11/2022 at 7:17 AM, Tommy124 said:

Fantastic build! IMHO this Fujimi kit is a not too great depiction of a car that in itself is not the definition of beauty. As a result, many (most) builds I have seen of this kit looked rather... let's say "average". But such a monster should not look average, it needs to stand out! And that is just what your model does, in every department! Very well done. Just one (smallest) bit of criticism: if you have a car with a French registration, it needs to have plates on both ends. Well, maybe the front plate just went off while doing more than 300 km/h on the Autobahn! 😄

Thank you, Thomas.

I mostly agree with you about everything you say. This series of Fujimi kits are not all that great in general. They have almost no engine detail and chassis detail is minimal. And this Porsche is not exactly Koenig Specials best looker either. However, Fujimi have nailed the body and proportions perfectly and have included some detail specific to this car. It's not their fault it was an "ugly duckling". I tried to soften some of the eye sores on it to make it a little easy on the eyes. Most obvious is the paint, which as I have mentioned is actually a very modern Lamborghini tri-coat. All the real cars were red, black or dark blue metallics with one even painted two tone with red bottom and black on top, which makes it look even more hideous. All of which were typical choices for the period the cars came out. What nobody probably noticed is, that I have mounted the rear lights upside down, locating the back up lights on the bottom instead of on top. To do that I also painted the entire light assembly red, instead of red on the bottom with orange upper half, which would have placed it square in the late '80s, early '90s. Also I chose to paint the door handles body color instead of the actual plastic black on the real car. All these are minute details, but they make a big difference visually.

 About the license plate, you are 100% right and I am well aware of it. But first off, all the Euro plates I had were from kits that were reading something associated with the model they came from, like 599 or 612 from the the corresponding Ferrari kits or R8 whatever from the Audi one. This plate was the only random one and it actually had 930, which is supposedly what this Porsche was based on. Besides if I had the means living on the French riviera and and driving and maintaining this crazy creation, I am pretty sure I would get away with it and afford the ticket. 😜

Edited August 14, 2022 by mrm

[mrm]

On 8/11/2022 at 10:41 AM, radiohd10 said:

very very nice

 

On 8/11/2022 at 1:06 PM, cobraman said:

Very sharp, well done !

 

On 8/11/2022 at 10:32 PM, Bruce Scully said:

A super nice build , that looks great .

 

On 8/12/2022 at 11:32 AM, Street Rod said:

Great build! The yellow really suits the car. Interior details are very good. I like it!

 

On 8/12/2022 at 5:17 PM, PappyD340 said:

Very nice!

 

1 hour ago, slusher said:

Very sharp Porsche!

Ryan, Ray, Bruce, Doyle, Larry and Carl, thank you guys! Appreciate it. 

[mrm]

On 8/12/2022 at 6:36 PM, Speedpro said:

Beautiful! Nice paint. looks very smooth. Are those Bbs wheels? They look really good on this 911.

Speedpro

Thank you, Paul.

Yes, They are BBS LMs. That is what Koenig used on his earlier cars, before he had his own design wheels made for him. I actually do have the BBS decals to go in the center caps, which should be black, but I decided to leave them silver, as the black centers are pretty retro. I may change that in the future, but it's staying silver for now.