galaxyg

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.

Background: I do like the Toyota Crown very much as a large saloon car, and this 14th generation of the Crown is my favourite from them all. The hard part was finding a colour which suited it. This is the 3rd Aoshima Toyota Crown I've built. Pros: Nice clean mouldings, good shape and proportions, good decals, plenty of details - for example a separate chromed crown emblem for the steering wheel centre. Window masks included. Fits together easily. Moulded in white so it's easy to make it any colour you wish. Great wheels. Adjustable ride height and camber, if that's your thing. Separate chromed door handles. Cons: The glue contact points for the front and rear bumpers are very very small, and needed reinforcement from the inside. The chassis is Aoshima's long-in-use spring/screw adjustable "large car standard" and is not representative of the real thing. The front grille's chrome part's attachment to the sprue could have been in a place less visible in the final build. Curbside - no engine. Verdict: Very very good. It easily builds into an excellent replica of the real thing. Build notes: Painted in Hycote Audi Dakota Grey, cleared with Mr Hobby Premium Gloss. The only addition to what was in the box is the Toyota emblem on the boot, which is a Tamiya item. The door mirrors are by some margin the largest I've ever fitted to a kit. At this point I'm certain I've found the sweet spot of model car kit photography, a few of these are amongst the best I've taken.

Background: The French do make some very nice rally hatchbacks and I like the look of this WRC car a lot with its silver/red Total livery. Shame the road version of the 206 is so horrible. I bought this particular version of the kit as it included a driver and co-driver - slightly less faffing with seatbelts and buckles. I chose to make this as Marcus Gronholm's car, despite him not winning with this event or the championship that year. The car at least has a 1 on the door. Pros: Lots of quality mouldings, perfect fitments and detail as you'd expect from Tamiya. Decals were very easy to apply. Cons: It may be user error but I found the rear wing didn't locate very well, and the top part of the rollcage didn't sit well either. The painting instructions for the driver/co-driver helmets are incorrect if you choose Gronholm/Rautiainen. The steering wheel needed a little drilling before it'd fit over the shaft of the steering column. Verdict: Very very good. It builds into an excellent replica of the real thing. Build notes: I've added a P/E bonnet and boot catches, some seatbelts and a few other details around the interior. Mostly it's built out-of-the-box as what's in the box is so good. Body is Tamiya TS-17 Gloss Aluminium and parts of the sills are sprayed red rather than decalled. The only red decal down there are the ones on each door. Clearcoated with Mr Hobby Premium Gloss. Built over the course of two months from Feb-April 2022.

Great build of a great looking car.

Ooops. I posted this in the WIP thread earlier today when I meant here... Background: I'd always planned to build one of Tamiya's early kits, a boxy JDM car with actual wing-mounted mirrors. The 1970's looking Leopard TR-X Turbo was long my preference from the 8 or so I could have tried to find from the Tamiya catalogue. Pros: Very easy to assemble and very well moulded. Some conveniences right in the box as the front and rear lights are seperate and chromed, not moulded-in body colour buckets. Proportions look good and even a kit as old as this shows Tamiya's dedication to quality. "TURBO" decals are supplied both in white and in black, giving you body colour choices later on. There's a bonus Honda Tact scooter in the kit also, and a Driver figure. Cons: No engine. No brakes (not that you could see them anyway). No Japanese number plate decals, just dress plates. Wheels are unrealistically bright chrome. Interior floor is the reverse of the underbody floor pan and looks like it too. Some of the underbody parts like the exhaust are all moulded in. Some sink-marks to deal with. Verdict: With a low part-count It's not as detailed as a modern kit but it does build into a very good replica of a Nissan Leopard. Build notes: Built over 3 weeks in February 2022. The only extra details added are rear seatbelts, all-round seatbelt retainers and JDM number plates. Painted in Tamiya Titanium Gold (upper) and Ford Ginger Ale Metallic (lower), with an AS-22 Dark Earth interior. Cleared with Mr Hobby Gloss Premium. I didn't build the Honda Tact that comes with it yet. Looks like a lot of fiddly maskng with the way it's assembled.

Background: I'd always planned to build one of Tamiya's early kits, a boxy JDM car with actual wing-mounted mirrors. The 1970's looking Leopard TR-X Turbo was long my preference from the 8 or so I could have tried to find from the Tamiya catalogue. Pros: Very easy to assemble and very well moulded. Some conveniences right in the box as the front and rear lights are seperate and chromed, not moulded-in body colour buckets. Proportions look good and even a kit as old as this shows Tamiya's dedication to quality. "TURBO" decals are supplied both in white and in black, giving you body colour choices later on. There's a bonus Honda Tact scooter in the kit also, and a Driver figure. Cons: No engine. No brakes (not that you could see them anyway). No Japanese number plate decals, just dress plates. Wheels are unrealistically bright chrome. Interior floor is the reverse of the underbody floor pan and looks like it too. Some of the underbody parts like the exhaust are all moulded in. Some sink-marks to deal with. Verdict: With a low part-count It's not as detailed as a modern kit but it does build into a very good replica of a Nissan Leopard. Build notes: Built over 3 weeks in February 2022. The only extra details added are rear seatbelts, all-round seatbelt retainers and JDM number plates. Painted in Tamiya Titanium Gold (upper) and Ford Ginger Ale Metallic (lower), with an AS-22 Dark Earth interior. Cleared with Mr Hobby Gloss Premium. I didn't build the Honda Tact that comes with it yet. Looks like a lot of fiddly maskng with the way it's assembled.