What years are the Tamiya Efini RX 7 and 350z Track?

[DaveM]

I was going to grab these two kits, but I also need to get paint for them. The RX 7 is Japan only RHD, but the 350z has both dash setups. It looks like the 350z is around 2003, but it is so hard to tell with these. Even Googling by year is tricky as there are more modded cars than stock.

The RX7 looks like a 1991 - 1993 car, but I really can't tell. I thought the shallower front fascia with the narrower slits under the parking lamps was an earlier style nose, but I googled 1991 and saw both shallow and deep ones. Thinking owners like to upgrade to newer body parts, (How many '86 Mustangs got the '88 grilles when they came out?) I googled 2002 and saw about the same mix of deep and shallow noses! They must have been a couple of different options, or maybe one was for Japan, and the other was to meet the specs of another country? I hate to admit this, but I can only be sure that it is a third gen (1991, 2002) car. I am guessing earlier because of the parking lamps and the foglights in the center opening. They sure didn't make many huge changes during the 12 year run!

The 350z is also a bit tricky. The hood looks early (Pre 2006) and I am inclined to go with 2003 as the kit seems to have been introduced earlier, but the little slats in the grille look later. Again, when I google by year, I see some earlier and later looking fascias. I kind of need to decide whether I am going to grab these kits. With the 350z, it seems as if all of the good colors were for one year only. I need to know what year the model is to match a color to it. (I'm hoping it's an '03, as there are two really cool colors that were '03 only. )

Any thoughts on these kits? they both look like nice kits. I really like the looks of the 350z. The Efini, i am a little more ambivalent on. It isn't a U.S. model. It's Right hand drive. It's not as awesome as the 350z...I also hate the idea of trying to cover the red plastic with any color other than red. I love Tamiya kits, but their colors can really bleed through a paint job quickly! Also on the Tamiya pictures of the 350z, they show a big section of the chassis in Silver. This is on a model of a silver car. Is that supposed to be body color, or was it silver or metal on all colors of cars?

Thanks,

Dave

[Zarana-X]

I can't answer most of those questions, but Tamiya makes great kits. If you can find any dates on the kit, or instructions, that would probably be the year. Tamiya usually gets these pretty close to the car's actual release. The only trouble I'e ever had was some bad decals in a re-release of the Countach LP500s. Personally out of the two, I'd get the RX-7, but that's just me.

On this though, "Also on the Tamiya pictures of the 350z, they show a big section of the chassis in Silver. This is on a model of a silver car. Is that supposed to be body color, or was it silver or metal on all colors of cars?" - On modern cars, then entire body, including the bottom is painted. On older cars, you would till see primer and the body color as overspray. I'm not sure on the transition, but I would guesstimate early '90's.

Edited April 26, 2015 by Zarana-X

[Greg Myers]

from Tamiya : http://www.tamiyausa.com/items/plastic-model-series-20/1-24-scale-sports-car-8000/mazda-efini-rx-7-kit-24110

[Greg Myers]

and again from Tamiya ( remember, Google is your friend) : http://tamiya.com/english/products/24254z_st/index.htm

[niteowl7710]

If you look around there is also an LHD U.S. Spec RX-7 of the same generation , it has a black car on the box art. The Efini was a JDM only trim.

I believe the RX-7s were tooled in '91, and the 350Z Track was tooled in 2005, representing a '03. The Track was the second version of the kit, there's a "rare" kit made in '03 that's just a plain jane 350Z, then there's the NiSMO 350Z kit as well.

[DaveM]

Thanks, everybody. I had read the Tamiya description on the 350z. Tamiya loves to tell the history and timeline of the car, but it never really pegged the model year. I was comparing pics of the model to pics of real cars. I had pretty much figured that the Z was early ('03-'05) but the Efini was proving a bit harder to nail down. I figured it was in the early half of the 3rd generation probably from the first half of the '90s, but it was getting hard to pin down a year. I'll go with '91 as the model year, since the kit being tooled in '91 precludes it being much later. (Unless they updated it)

And, yes, Google is my friend, but even so, 45 minutes of googling pictures left me less sure then when I started! (Just like my "real" friends, Google can confuse me sometimes) I got on the Tamiya USA site, and read the 350z description, but the Efini would only give me a fuzzy blown up picture of the box top. Thanks for the links. I had kind of hesitated to post this, because I was sure it should have been easy to confirm the information, but the little details of some of these Japanese cars are not as obvious to me as the differences between a '69 and '70 Cougar. I found a couple of sites that I'm sure would have cleared it up if I could had read Japanese. I even tried using translator on one, but it just turned it into word soup! I grabbed both kits BTW! Now I am going to order some paint for the 350z. The RX-7 will probably end up black. (Nothing else will cover up that red plastic.)

Thanks again for all of the help.

Dave