galaxyg

Background: Long out of production and one of the rarer Tamiya kits out there, possibly due to that die-cast underbody. It's a very well recognised/legendary JGTC (now SuperGT) car, and something I was not about to pass up at a sensible price back in 2019. Decals are included for two similar liveries, and I chose the Motul Pitwork Car No. 22 as the more interesting of the two. Pros: Everything. This kit is just so well moulded and so easy to assemble. Everything fits perfectly and there's no cleanup required. Production details such as making the wheel nut separate from the wheels makes painting and assembly straightforward. Great decals, sensibly plated parts where needed, great tyres and perfect clear parts. The die-cast underbody gives the kit real weight and heft once fully assembled and the fact it's screwed to the main body means there are no concerns about body and chassis separating. Cons: The only downside of the die-cast underbody is the general lack of suspension detail beyond the hubs, brakes and steering, but since all this would be entirely hidden under the aforementioned flat underbody anyway, it's barely a con. The decals are quite some work but that's more the fault of the livery than any problem with the kit. It's a con if you don't like conforming decals to awkward shapes. Verdict: This is a top quality Tamiya product and a very enjoyable build. The completed build photos speak a lot for the quality of the kit. Build notes: Built in just over 3 weeks in March/April 2025. I've added some seatbelts and some PE buckles, and some PE bonnet pins. The rest is as it came in the box. The paint is a combination of Mica Silver and Italian Red, plus all the decals which make it harder to tell what is paint and what is decal.

Thanks. A Nikon D7100 DSLR with a 35mm Prime lens gives a decent amount of perspective. The Nikon's not especially new, I think I've had it 10 years or so. Set the aperture to something like f/22 so there's no out-of-focus parts and then use a tripod so the longish shutter speed required gives no blur either. The longer shutter speed is needed as the f/22 will make everything darker otherwise. Having the entire car in focus helps give the impression of a larger object - real cars are almost always entirely in focus when photographed. It's probably the single biggest improvement in the quality of my photos once I started doing that. There are 3 lights, one directly above the car so the darkest shadow is under the car rather than off to one side. Just as a real car casts shadows. The plain "studio" background is a piece of thin grey card bulldog clipped to a piece of thicker cardboard, and the end of the grey card is curved up at the back to make an infinity curve in the background. The car park background is two pieces of pre-printed A3 paper, one below and once behind. I made the walls/floor on them from taking photos of a real car park and then Photoshop. A photo of the setup would describe all this better, perhaps I'll take one next time I'm having a photo session with my next completed build, which is coming along.

Background: That a model kit exists of one of Nissan's late 80s "pike cars" is quite an unusual thing. Once I discovered it existed, I had to have one once I could find one at a reasonable price - the combination of unusual kit and 80's JDM is hard to resist. It's one of Bandai's very few forays into car models, and it's a shame they didn't do more at the time. The kit is from 1987 so it's been waiting nearly 40 years for someone to assemble it. Not being a fan of yellow paint (the "standard" colour for the Be-1), it seemed the ideal opportunity to try out some of Tamiya's aircraft spray paint, in a Nissan Figaro-esque shade. Pros: It's easy to assemble and all fits together well. The body has a good shape and it's pretty robust - thicker than the usual Japanese model kit. The roof can be made open or closed - and there's a good deep moulded scribing line on the inside of the roof making opening it up easy. The panel lines are all good and deep. The seats recline! Pointless but interesting. The indicator and brake light lenses are all moulded in orange/red plastic. Cons: The main transparent part for the windows is too thick and causes some unrealistic distortion when looked through, especially around the edges. The chassis is super simplified and there is no engine. The instruction manual and therefore also the painting instructions are only in Japanese. Verdict: It's a simple fun kit of a simple fun car, but builds into a nicely realistic model. Build notes: Built over 8 days in March 2025. The exterior is painted in Tamiya AS29 Grey-Green IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy) and clear coated in Mr Hobby Super Gloss. I've added some JDM number plates and some seatbelts on the rear seats, plus some card to make the body-colour interior of the B and C posts. Everything else was part of the kit, including that cute backpack.

Background: A new tooling of a great looking late 80s/early 90s Japanese hot hatch. Easy for me to choose this one. Pros: Very nicely moulded, great shape, very little moulding cleanup required. All goes together well. Clearly designed to make ease of painting a consideration - the multi-part seats for example. Very detailed underbody, transmission and suspension. Clear parts all very nice and good decals. Cons: Uncorrected the rear suspension is too low. The boxed wheels seem a little small. As this kit shares a lot of it's parts with the rally version, there's work to be done converting the rally-biased mouldings - mainly either plugging holes or drilling them. The interior moulding is clearly biased towards the rally version too. Some of the instructions for assembling the suspension are a little unclear. Verdict: Hasegawa have certainly improved compared to older kits I've built. This is a much more modern feeling kit to assemble and aside from the "too low" rear suspension issue, it's very good indeed. Recommended. Build notes: Built over about two and a half weeks in March 2025. Painted in Nissan Silver Moss and clearcoated with Mr Hobby Premium Top Coat. Aside from adding my own number plates, I've only changed one other thing from what was supplied in the box - the wheels are from a Tamiya ND Mazda MX-5. As a result I've also made adjustments to the ride height to both accommodate these slightly larger wheels and to correct the kit's "too low" rear. (Below) With the Aoshima Nissan Pulsar I built a few years ago.

Background: After building a Liberty Walk GT-R and an Aventador, I was keen to build yet another from the type, this time the Hurracan. It's visually a bit more subtle than the other two but I still wanted to give it an unsubtle colour - Lexus Copper Crest. Pros: As advertised, it's a kit that's been designed to be easy to build, and it certainly is. Pretty flawless in terms of moulding, fitment and overall quality - the interior is very nicely detailed for example and the body has a great shape with zero cleanup required. At least 50% of it can be assembled without glue, which is great for keeping it clean. The adjustable supension can be changed even after the build is complete, so you can have as much or as little camber and ride height as you wish. Both decals and stickers are provided, in many cases you can choose between the two. Stickers work better in certain situations. Cons: The windscreen needs a bit of encouragement to sit where it should, and the front headlight transparent parts take a bit of fiddling to get them to sit correctly. It seems wrong to complain the kit has simplified suspension as it's written on the box as a selling point to allow for the post-build adjustability. Verdict: Very very nice. A great beginner kit too, and a very enjoyable build experience regardless of skill level. Build notes: Built over 11 days in February 2025, painted in rattle-can Lexus Copper Crest and cleared with rattle-can Mr Hobby Premium Gloss. It's built entirely out of the box, no additions made or really needed either. The only thing I've changed is I've used less than the full suggestion of decals, not all of them were to my taste. I did choose this over the LB Works Murcielago and the only mistake there was, I should have bought both. Photography notes: If you've seen any of the builds and photography I've done over the past few years, it's been a journey of getting the studio shots perfected, and having got as close to this as I imagine I'm going to get, I have now turned my attention to "realistic" settings photography. Whilst on holiday in Japan in December 2025 I took a lot of reference photos of floors, tiles, tarmac, concrete walls and signage in one of Tokyo's most well known underground car parks: The UDX in Akihabara. After some Photoshop work to make them fill out to sheets of A3 and finding an online printer, I've got 12 or so choices of backdrop now and another 12 or so of ground to sit the car on. After a lot of experimentation with lighting, I've got a result which I'm very happy with. After a few studio shots, the backgrounds debut with this Liberty Walk Hurracan.

Background: The Sauber Mercedes C9: "One of the greatest Group C cars ever" made by Tamiya: "First in quality around the world". How could I not build this one? Group C, certainly for me the most interesting era of endurance racing and looking at their output from it, also for Tamiya. Pros: Pretty flawless in terms of moulding, fitment and overall quality. The photo-etch parts in the re-release do make a significant difference to the end result. Cons: The windscreen wiper is straight and doesn't confirm to the curve of the screen. The body is a little loose over the chassis. A few more decals for the interior and dashboard would have been nice. And that's it. Verdict: Outstanding. If you're into Group C there's no reason to not get it and chances are if you are, it's already either in your stash or on your wish list. There's enough in the box to make a very nice model and enough quality in there to make superdetailing a very worthwhile effort. Build notes: Built over in just over a month in Jan/Feb 2025. Painted in Tamiya rattle-can gloss aluminium. I had the original release of the kit but obtained the photo-etch parts from Tamiya as a spare part. Other additions to the kit are quite a lot of extra scratchbuilt detailing parts - hoses, fittings, wires and such, in both the cockpit and the engine bay. I also added seatbelts and removed the passenger seat. On the exterior, I filled and sanded the panel line caused by the front cover being a separate part. This build is surprisingly heavy after completion, probably as a result of some of the solder-wire in the engine bay. Sitting there on the shelf it looks a very solid and grounded vehicle and it really does look like a miniaturised version of a real C9. If this somehow doesn't make my top 3 of 2025, I will have had a very very good years modelling.

Thanks. I didn't adjust the ride height of this one as it's a more modern Hasegawa kit and they seem to have got the ride height about right this time. I have built a Hasegawa JTC Civic however and the ride height for that is all wrong without correction.

Background: I love the idea of very ordinary cars being used for racing, more or less unmodified. This Toyota Corolla certainly fits the bill. The kit has been issued in a number of liveries and this one appealed to me the most. Pros: Goes together easily enough, no major problems. Nice decals and good clear parts. Good shape and proportions. Cons: To me the tyres look too chunky - too high in the sidewall, compared to photos of the real thing. As it shares it's sprues and parts with the road-car kit, there's some work to be done on the body - drilling holes for the fuel fillers etc. Two-piece wheels would have made the painting of wheel and rim easier. The suggestion to use a "cut out with the backing sheet" Toyota emblem would look quite cheap/poor. Verdict: Good. Like the Corolla itself, it's all very straightforward, performs as expected and doesn't require much comment one way or the other. Build notes: Built over 3 weeks in Dec 2024 and Jan 2025, it took me another 3 weeks or so to find the time and the light to photograph it. I've added a few interior details and some PE for the tow hooks and bonnet pins, and the most visible addition - a Tamiya Toyota emblem on the grille. Aside from that it's all built from the box.

My favourite Corvette. Great looking build. I think the C5 would not look out of place in any modern line-up of cars - certainly from the outside anyway. Yeah, that dust is a pain. Always seems to attract itself to models even more when there's a camera around...

Great looking Civic and very tidy on the masking. Shame these kits are not so common, they're one of the few Honda kits with an engine.

Amazing build of one of the best F1 cars ever.

Very tidy. Tamiya light blue metallic is one of their best colours - suits so many cars.

In Chronological order. My top 3 of 2024 (and it's a hard choice this year, so many builds I love) would be 1) Lexus LFA. 2) Dodge Viper 3) Liberty Walk Aventador.

Background: I think one of the things I like about the flatnose 911 is it's less VW Beetle-like appearance. I'd been after one for a while - Fujimi or Tamiya. I saw this one going cheap a few weeks ago as it had no box and poor decals, and so there it was, in my hand and then on my workbench (such that it is - a cutting mat on a windowsill). The final build of 2024. Pros: Being a snap-fit kit it all fits together perfectly. Really nicely moulded- it's an old kit but the Tamiya quality is there - very feint seam lines on the body, no flash or sink marks anywhere and nicely detailed despite the low parts count (~18 pieces only). Cons: I can't really criticize a snap-fit kit for any of the snap-fit-ness as it's part of it's nature, so I'll stick to commenting outside that. It lacks a rear view mirror and since that's fairly visible from the outside, something of an omission. The door mirrors are something of a tight fit and seem to sit at a slightly odd angle. Beyond that - really nothing else is a con. An 18 piece kit and it has everything it needs. Verdict: It's a very very easy build of a great looking car. There's nothing not to like. Build notes: Built in just 4 days (!) right before Christmas 2024. 4 days is a surprise even to me and is due to several factors, not least plenty of spare time in the 4th day and some decent daylight to work in, clearcoat that does not react to only 24h dry main colour, a lack of much masking required for the kit and of course the snap-fit nature of the kit itself. The car is painted in Nissan Silver Moss and clearcoated with Mr Hobby Super Premium Gloss. I've changed the wheels for some Aoshima BBS ones, added brake discs front and rear and added a rear view mirror. As the decals were all more or less dead I used parts-box number plates, and I've also added some mesh inside the engine cover top as it was too see-through. The final addition was a blue sunstrip across the top of the windscreen. The interior is a combination of Peugeot Antelope Beige and Semi Gloss Black. It'd be one of my top 3 builds of the year if I'd have built it in any other year than 2024, but as it is there are still at least 3 builds I rank higher from this year.

Background: After a while deciding which of the modern US Muscle cars I wanted to build most, the 2017 version of the Camaro won out. The three-box model of car shape will always be my favourite despite how much the manufacturers want to sell everyone an SUV, and the 2017 Camaro is a perfect evolution of the three-box shape - brutal and elegant at the same time. Pros: Highly detailed, full engine and suspension, great interior and clear parts and mostly fits together easily enough. Great shape, decent tyres and decals. Cons: The sprues have a lot of flash and the body has a lot of sink marks, so cleanup is needed. The body is moulded in yellow which is a bit of a pain to cover up. I think the ride height could do with being a shade lower, but not by very much, certainly not by enough to make me try the clearly tricky task of reducing it by 1mm or less. Some shaving of the interior below the dashboard is necessary to get the body to sit right. Verdict: It's great kit and highly recommended. When you add on the fact that it's AMT (from who I have only built mediocre kits before), it's a win for them and for us. Build notes: Built on and off over about 4 months in the second half of 2024, the long build time (for me) is no reflection of the kit or my enthusiasm for it, more just a case of other things going on in life at the same time coupled with painting the body back in summer before the main build began. Painted in Tamiya TS-54 Light Metallic Blue. I've added two wires to the engine bay, but beyond that this kit already has pretty much everything it needs.