Revell Ferrari Italia- you'll need sunglasses for this one!

[jaymcminn]

The last several builds I have done have been in pretty subdued colors- the Ferrari 328GTS in gunmetal grey and the Ferrari 360 Spyder in California blue- so I decided to shake things up a little for my current build. The Ferrari Italia doesn't lend itself well to subtle colors, in my opinion- the sharp angles and curves of this car beg for a really striking color to show them off, Probably the most striking is Rosso Dino- a historic Ferrari color that made its appearance in the late '60s. Despite its name ("rosso" is Italian for red) the color is a bright, vibrant red-orange. Here it is on an Italia Spyder...

I am replicating this on the Revell Italia kit with Tamiya's TS-31 bright orange. The color is pretty close...

To go with the bright orange paint, I decided to replace the Revell kit's iffy wheels and tires with a set of BBS 20" wheels from Fujimi. The wheels were chrome plated, but Easy-Off took care of that. I painted them in Tamiya gunmetal and added Ferrari wheel centers from Model Factory Hiro. They look pretty mean.

I am using the Hobby Design photoetched set with this build- for less than ten bucks, this set includes all the stuff that really makes the kit come to life, such as the mesh pieces for all the intakes. The interior will be dark brown with black carpets and black Alcantara on the seat centers and headliner.

More pics and progress to follow. So far, I'm liking the Revell kit- the engineering's a little clunky, and the detail is pretty simplified (mostly where it won't show) but the proportions look spot-on and the fit, from my early test fitting, seems really excellent.

As always, any questions and comments are welcome!

[bryan_m]

wow! that is a LOUD color! looks very cool tho........

cheers

bryan

[Mauricio Meyer]

Amazing color! i like it.

Won't miss this building process

[GoatGuy]

Looks great so far. Looking forward to more because I want to do a Ferrari.

[lanesteele240]

one time i stared at the sun with a pair of binoculars for an hour.

you are doing a grate job and it looks awesome. i feel it would have looked better tin Clemson Tiger Orange

[jaymcminn]

So, I've been plugging away at this build, and there have been a few changes... the original plan was for a brown interior with black alcantara (suede) inserts. After painting the brown, I realized that it just didn't work with the bright orange paint, so I went with basic black. It looks so much better! I then masked off and sprayed suede paint followed by Tamiya flat black for the inserts. For the carbon fiber seat buckets, I sprayed them in semi-gloss black then masked them with mesh ribbon and airbrushed them with gunmetal metalizer. After a thick coat of semi-gloss clear, they really look like carbon fiber. The Hobby Design photoetched detail set provides air vents for the dash, "cavallino" for the center console, dash badge, pedals, and speaker grilles for the doors. The prancing horse on the steering wheel center is a Model Factory Hiro piece. Flocking is Ken's Fuzzi-Fur.

[jaymcminn]

The engine has received basic paint detailing- it's all going to be almost completely hidden under the engine bay shroud anyway. The airbox/intake plenum unit received the same carbon fiber treatment as the seats, The Ferrari scripts are from the HD set, as is the Ferrari plaque on the airbox.

I've got the chassis set up and dialed in the track and ride height. It's going to be about 2 scale inches lower than stock, which will look really mean with the 20" BBS wheels. I also (hopefully) corrected the tendency of this kit to sit a little high in the nose. I've left myself some wiggle room when it comes to final assembly to get the ride height absolutely perfect. Here's the chassis...

Next up will be assembly of the body/interior unit and all of the fiddly photoetched mesh screen involved in that. Should be fun!

[jaydar]

The seats look reallygreat. What is the name of the spray suefe product you used????

Thanks for sharing your build.

Joe.