galaxyg

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.

There certainly is! Look out for the completed photos either late Saturday or sometime Sunday.

Headlights and tail lights, the car gets it's face. These wheels are *very* chromy. A trick I've used before. Mr Hobby Flat Matt. Turns chrome into aluminium in one coat. The wheel centres are intended to be black with giant hex decals to cover the chrome (decals can be seen at far left of photo). But this seems not the best way. Mr Muscle soon gets the chrome off. and I'll trim out the badge part of the decal to use on semi-gloss black instead. What can't be seen on this image is the new *black* TURBO decals down the side. Turns out Black was the best colour after all, so happy accident. As is often the case with my builds, the mirrors are the final part to go on. In this instance Tamiya has even moulded in the small mirror wipers of the original car. How useful these are in real life, who knows but it's amazing the amount of great and/or weird engineering that used to go on with Japanese cars and also - how much of that cool stuff they kept in their domestic market only. This is the last photo in the WIP, completed photos will follow as soon as.

What follows are a series of photos going from freshly clearcoated (top) to the first look at combined body/chassis. Via a lot of polishing and masking for the black parts and annoyingly - and on one side only, the TURBO decal I thought should be protected by clearcoat, pulled off by the mask. Shame BUT - the kit does come with a second set of these decals in black and for a while anyway I've been wondering if that would have been the better colour choice anyway. Now I'll find out.

I've not seen the studio27 ones but the Haswgawa green is what I'd describe as "quite dark" and the real car photos look about the same to me.

Completed interior. I've added rear seatbelts and seatbelt retainers. TURBO! Having examined images of the real car, indeed the TRX-Turbo is reversed. I can imagine only so you can let the person in front of you know in their mirror you're packing a TURBO. TURBO TURBO. Is there a more 1980s word?

In the spray booth Although I wasn't 100% sure of using gold (Tamiya Titanium Gold in this case) on this car, as soon as it was out of the can and onto the body, I knew it was the right choice. It is going to be a two-tone body however, so masking begins. And here's the result. It's subtle but I like it. The lower colour is Ford Ginger Ale Metallic, a kind of greenish gold. I'll let the body sit for a week now to get full dried out before I think about going near it with clearcoat. Meanwhile, back at the chassis I've blocked up all the battery/motor holes. Most of the underbody assembles, except for the petrol tank. There are not a lot of parts but it's quite well detailed. If there's one thing I'd change about this kit, it's be to not have the exhaust pipe moulded in. Now with petrol tank and weathering. Wing mirrors have sink marks, so get some filler. Door cards all finished and with chrome trim. How very 80s. A brown digital dashboard.

Thanks. It's not, especially when they're old like these were. The ones down the left side of the car are a bit scruffy as they tore.

Further work on the interior. Much brownness.

It's a fairly simple kit so hopefully won't be a long build - once I've picked a colour. There are some interesting details (to me anyway) about what's in the box. Despite all 4 tyres being in the same bag, two of them have collected this white residue, which I'm going to guess is related to getting them out of the mould. Whilst the other two have not. It comes off with water anyhow. The 50cc Honda Tact scooter that comes with the kit is not some extra pack-in, it's part of one of the main sprues that also contains car parts. I'll be building it too. The driver however won't be taking part in this project. I'll save him for a race car, especially since he inexplicably is wearing a 4 point harness, not standard equipment on the Nissan Leopard I'm starting with the interior as I know what colour this is going to be, two-tone brown and beige. I have some ideas on the car body (gold being the most likely), but I'm not 100% sure on that yet.

Background: I do like the look of Group C racers generally and the XJR-9 in particular - once it's got those horrible-looking side skirts off. The Castrol livery on this Jag is at least as striking to me as the Silk Cut one. Pros: It all fits together mostly well and the moulding is crisp. Aside from being the correct body insofar as louvres, mirrors etc for the IMSA spec XJR-9, there's little else good to say about this kit noting that the (non-IMSA spec) Tamiya kit does it all ten times better. Cons: No engine, low detail interior - in fact low detail overall, the body has no positive fitments to hold it to the chassis, the brake discs have no calipers, some of the parts do need a little work to fit and some are annoyingly fiddly. No suspension detail either and the wheels don't steer. Some of the decals are a little large to fit into the spaces intended. The instructions are a bit vague in places and the painting instructions are certainly wrong in places. There's a few areas with sink marks and quite a few ejector pin marks too. Verdict: Super average. Buy only if you really want the IMSA spec car. Build notes: I've added a P/E tow hook, opened up a few holes in the body, added an aerial and wheel nuts and fabricated some brake calipers. Additionally I added electrical shut-off lever and some wires to the box on the dashboard. I've also removed the rear wheel covers - there is photo evidence included in the kit's instructions of the car running without them at some point. Painted overall in Tamiya Pure White, and the rear wing is painted not decalled. The old decals are a little scruffy down the sides and yellowing in places so it's not exactly a super-clean build which is a little annoying. However it's still a great looking car/livery despite having black wheels which I don't normally care for. I didn't want to stray too far from the real car by making them silver. With hindsight I should have painted the green down the sides, not used decals.

Very nice. I've built this same kit too. A simple kit but a nice result.

Nice looking Skyline and a great shine.

It looks good in gold. I've built this kit, it's a good one for sure.

Very nice, great matt finish.

Fantastic clean build. I prefer the darker background.

Well that is just fantastic, both the ideas for modifying the original kit and the execution of them. I love the colour.

Looks great, I've always loved the 635CSi, I think it's the best looking car BMW have ever made. It's also the car Maddie Hayes had in Moonlighting.

Build notes: Because the kit also includes the non-Liberty-Walk suspension parts, I was able to use those instead, making the car's stance look normal. I also swapped the stretched/pulled tyres for some normal ones and painted the black wheels silver. All this greatly improves the look of the car (for my taste) - and I have come to really love the result. Other additions to the kit are the Hobby Design Photo Etch kit, some seatbelt retainers, the rear number plate and a small amount of carbon fibre decal. I've also intentionally omitted some of the less desirable Liberty Walk decals. Painted in Tamiya TS-52 Candy Lime Green and clearcoated with Tamiya TS-13 Gloss. Quite possibly the best set of photos I've taken of any build. Built over the space of 12 days.

Some of the kits I might build in 2022 are below. It's by no means all of my stash (which totals 61) and by the end of 2022 it'll likely be some of these and some others not listed. Revell Corvette C7.R Tamiya Ford Focus WRC 2001 Tamiya Nissan Leopard TR-X Turbo Revell BMW M1 Procar Revell Ferrari 612 Scaglietti Aoshima Toyota Hiace Tamiya Peugeot 206 WRC 2001 Tamiya Peugeot 405T16 Paris-Dakar Tamiya Mazda 787B Belkits Citroen C3 WRC Tamiya Xanavi Z Aoshima Impul 630R Tamiya Toyota EXIV

These are great. Especially that 69 GTO. What's the ceramic-looking material on the large part under the hood?