galaxyg

Background: I am of that generation where the 328 GTS is the answer to the question "What does a Ferrari look like?". That and it's similarity to to the 308 (Magnum's car), the 512 BB , 365 BB and the 288 GTO makes you wonder if Ferrari could've got stuck in the same groove as Porsche - making every car look basically the same. Fortunately not. I regard the 328 GTS as the ultimate development of the classic Ferrari shape. It's a beautiful car, a work of art. Pros: Great proportions, clean mouldings and little cleanup required. A full engine is included and the interior is nicely detailed as well. Also comes with a Photo-Etched fret for some of the more detailed parts and badges. The plated wheels look very good. Cons: Parts of it are fiddly to put together, especially the front and rear suspension and the exhaust system, the latter of which is a small 3D puzzle to get the parts into place. The instructions are only so-so, certain parts are not easy to follow and the assembly order isn't always logical. Some of the engine parts would have been easier to assemble if not plated. No Italian number plates included, only German ones which seems odd. The passenger side wiper does not conform to the shape of the windscreen at all, as it's entirely straight. Verdict: Very good. Builds into a beautiful model of the 328GTS. Build notes: I've added seatbelts and retainers, carpeting, plus quite a bit of extra detail to the engine bay by way of hoses, pipes and most noticeably, the oil filter on top. I also changed the rear number plate and swapped the useless passenger windscreen wiper for one from a Daihatsu Move CS kit. The side Ferrari shields are also aftermarket additions. Undercoated with Tamiya pink primer and painted in Tamiya TS-8 Italian red, with a TS-46 Light sand interior.

Very nice and looks a lot better with those (probably Nissan Skyline?) wheels than the boring boxed wheels. Great colour too.

Great result from a very old kit. I wish someone would do a new kit of this car.

Background: I decided to model something that'd remind me of being on holiday in Asia and also - this HiAce is the second oldest kit in my stash, having been there some 9 years. This model of the HiAce, the H200 - is pretty ubiquitous all over Asia - especially Japan, Thailand and Malaysia amongst others. It is to Asia what the Ford Transit was to the UK during the 70s/80s - Everywhere for everything. This one is inspired by a Japan Rail version I saw online, but I've made this one with the custom parts rather than some bog-standard steel-wheels-and-black-plastic-bumper version of the HiAce. Pros: Very well moulded, little cleanup required and nearly everything fits together well. Nice decals, although no number plates. Entire chassis and interior is great. Cons: "Fits together" is not the same as "joins together". As is typical with many other Aoshima kits I've built, the overlapping areas they give you to glue parts together are often very small. For example the chrome lights, front bumper and body have a lot of pieces of plasticard overlapping and reinforcing the joints on the inside. And as will be obvious from the photos, the rear hatchback cover does not fit very well at all. I think Aoshima were more interested in the opening feature (a gimmick to my mind) than how well the door sat when closed. Also the entire body sides were a little bowed - since corrected during the build. Verdict: It's OK. Very well done in parts and not so in others. I have built better Aoshima kits. The fit of the back door is disappointing. Build notes: Built over the course of 3 weeks in June/July 2022. Tamiya Pearl White, Racing Green and Gloss Aluminium, with custom decals, including the number plates which are the year of my birth. I've also changed the wheels as the boxed versions were much too bling.

Great looking build. Yellow suits it.

Nice. Very tidy masking.

Very nice, great shine on the paintwork.

Great looking build of what is to me the best skyline in the best colour.

A change of wheels, lowering and a cool paint job and suddenly a very ordinary car is transformed into something Dom Toretto could drive. Very nice, inspiring build.

Cool. So often I've thought of getting and building this kit. how does it go together?

Very nice clean build, great shine.

Love it. This'd be the "Lorinser" model with the wheels from the AMG SL I guess?

Great paint job on a legend of a car.

The pins are a great idea to what I've found to be a common Revell problem.

Very cool.

Thanks to everyone for the comments so far. Makes the slog of building this one worthwhile.

Background: I like the look of the BMW M1 Procar but I could not find a single real-life livery I wished to model so I decided to make one up with the help of some custom-printed decals and a bit of inspiration from the Williams FW08 from the late 1970s - the right time period at least. I thought the car could use with a little more modernisation too, brakes and wheels. Pros: There's an engine. The decals are nicely printed. Little else. Cons: A lot of work is needed to make this kit fit together properly - so many parts have no mounting points and need improvisation. Scruffy looking mouldings that seem like they were not even that great back when this kit was first released by ESCI in 1979. No side windows. Instructions are not clear in parts, not well illustrated and include at least one part shown mounted 180 degrees from what would be correct. Verdict: Mostly garbage. Despite both Revell and Italeri re-releasing this kit even in 2015-2020, the moulding need to be retired permanently. I'm an experienced modeller and I found it a slog to build at times. It'd put a relative newcomer off entirely. It is a scruffy, untidy model kit. Build notes: Built over the space of about 6 weeks in May-June 2022. Custom decals created by myself in Adobe Illustrator, and printed by Indycals - following the colour scheme (somewhat) of the Williams FW08 and some other decals I thought fitted with it. The front brakes are Tamiya, as are the replaced wheels and tyres. There's wiring added to the engine and seatbelts added in the interior, plus P/E bonnet pins and an electrical shut-off lever near the windscreen. It is a damn cool looking car in this livery and with these wheels, even though I say it myself. Aside from the problems building it, it's turned out exactly as I'd imagined.

Cool. The yellow suits it.

A fantastic looking race car but I found the suggested yellow livery a bit boring - even if it is traditional. So I had some custom decals printed at Indycals and made up my own livery based on the colours of Ryobi Power Tools - including some Porsche Peridot Green metallic paint I had left over from a Cayman build. The kit is OK. Some grinding was involved to get it all to sit together properly. It's well detailed in some places (engine, interior) and entirely lacking in others (suspension, poseable wheels).

Thanks. It's a big A2 sheet of black paper, made by a company called "Canson", from the local art shop.

Background: The 180SX is one of my top 20 Japanese sports cars, and Fujimi's kit of the Type-X version is the best/only option currently in production. Fortunatly it's a good one. Purple seems to suit a lot of Nissan sports cars, and there are (as yet) no other purple cars on my shelf. Pros: The body is incredibly cleanly moulded, with no seam lines, no flash or anything to clean up. The rest of the kit is reasonably simple but plenty good enough, and it all fits together perfectly. The moulded-in Type-X bodykit makes the car look better than the base model (Tamiya's out-of-production kit is the base model). Choice of LHD and RHD dashboards. Cons: No engine. The suspension is a little simplified. There are inexplicably two windscreens in the kit, one on the main sprue which is a little foggy, the other crystal clear. Perhaps an engineering/moulding problem with the former? The boxed wheels are not especially great and the tyres on them are not as low-profile as the box art would have you believe. Verdict: In this case I think the photos speak for the kit as a whole. It looks like a 180SX, builds easily and can give a great result without wrangling the kit. I've not built Tamiya's kit but I think this Fujimi one is comparable in the quality of the end result. Build notes: Built over 3 weeks in April/May 2022. Extras to the kit are: Aoshima Wedssport SA70 wheels, texture on the parcel shelf, an intercooler and mounting, and a Nissan emblem on the front of the bonnet. The car is painted in Hycote rattle-can Rover Amaranth purple, clearcoated with Mr Hobby Premium gloss.

Looks good, nice colour choice.

The recreated setup is below. The only difference is the original pictures did not have that patch of light across the car, as it was a less sunny day. The inset shows a photo from this exact recreated setup. The light patch makes it not as good but still nice. The main elements are: 1) A piece of black paper propped up against a box of cat food* to make an infinity curve. 2) A small light just to bring a little more light onto the front of the car (turned off in the setup image below but normally running at only about 20% anyhow). 3) A 35mm lens. When a 35mm lens is used about 300mm (12 inches) from a 1/24 car, it's a good approximation of the type of perspective when an eye sees a 1:1 car. 4) An aperture setting on the camera narrow enough to put the entire car into focus, front to back. Real cars when photographed are all in focus. And that's it! *other pet food boxes also work

Thanks. When I get a mo I'll take a photo of the setup, it's deceptively simple. They're taken indoors but in a conservatory, so there's a lot of light. There just one piece of black paper as the backdrop.

Great looking build of an uncommon livery.