Monogram Indy Car

[pepe]

I just received the Quaker State Porsche March Indy Car made by Monogram and upon opening the box a number of things bothered me.Overall accuracy of the kit seems borderline(I know the steering wheel and dash are off),not the best instructions with a real weakness in the paints needed.

I'm a relative newcomer to modeling and a total newbie to open wheel race cars, I love both Indy car and F1 racing so I thought this would be a good area for me to focus on,My question is ,Is this a good kit ? can it be built into an accurate representation of the real thing? Any tips ,experience or advise would be greatly appreciated

thanks

[Chief Joseph]

Hi Joe,

Welcome to the forum. If you are a relative newcomer to scale modeling, then I would suggest you build this kit purely for practice and don't get sidetracked by any inaccuracies you see in the details. Concentrate on the fundamentals of fitment, seam elimination, and painting/decals. I had a couple of those Monogram Indy kits way back when, and they are nice kits for the money. As you grow more confident in your skills, you'll probably want to move on to the Tamiya F1 kits, which (for the most part) are better-engineered and more expensive. Good luck and have fun!

[Art Anderson]

Monogram's March Indy Car kits represent the 1987 March, IIRC, which were CART cars that ran Indianapolis as well as the CART Championship series. I'm pretty sure that Monogram Models, based as they were back then in Morton Grove, Illinois, sent product development people to Indianapolis to photograph and measure a March chassis and engines for their model kit, augmented by information and pictures obtained from perhaps several race teams, even March Cars and Cosworth. Unfortunately, the Quaker State Porsche really didn't run at Indianapolis in May that year (again, IIRC) although it did make appearances at several CART races that season.

Having built approximately 200 1/24 and 1/25 scale Indy car models in the years 1967-83, I can say that every model kit of such cars at best represented a "snapshot" of each particular car at some point in time--but race cars tended to (and probably still do!) change from race track to race track, due to the differences in race courses, certainly oval tracks. In addition, a model kit manufacturer working to a specific price point (Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price), as certainly Monogram did back in the 1980's, live with limitations as to the variants they can achieve from any model kit tooling. So, while the engine in a particular version of such a race car might be an option as for creating a different version of a kit, often it was not possible to change every last little detail, even something as visible as the instrument panel and/or steering wheel. That would have been particularly true in the cockpit area of a model kit of just about any Indy car from the beginnings of rear engined race cars in US openwheel championship series race cars--simply because beginning with the Lotus 29 of 1963, the chassis "tub" almost always had to be "fitted" to the driver (for example, the 1963 Lotus 29 Powered by Ford chassis were different between the car built for Jim Clark--who stood about 5' 6" tall or thereabouts, and Dan Gurney, who towered over Clark at over 6' tall!).

In addition, certainly back even as late as the 1980's, practice and qualifications at Indianapolis lasted for as much as 2 weeks prior to the start of qualifications--lots and lots of practice laps, and lots of changes/modifications happened in a race team's "search for speed".

Couple the changes wrought on cars working up for the Indianapolis 500 back then, along with further modifications between races, and a model of any Indy car could (and probably still can be) simply a "snapshot" of a particular car, on a particular day, at a particular racetrack. But, that's what makes building models of race cars running long seasons challenging, fun and sometimes frustrating.

Joseph gives some excellent advice above: Since you are sort of just "starting out", build up this car as it is, practice your skills and hopefully advance them with each build. And, along the way, do all the research you can--there's nothing at all wrong with revisiting a race car subject you've built before, and adding into that new build of that particular car all those things you've learned both from reseach and reference along with new-found skills and techniques. After all, that's one of the things that makes this hobby the fun that it is.

Art

[Harry P.]

Any kit can be built into an accurate representation of the subject. The question is, how much work are you willing (and able) to put into fixing the problems with the kit? Some kits may require only minor tweaks, some kits require major "remanufacturing" of parts or scratchbuilding of missing and/or inaccurate parts.

I have a slightly different take on things. If you're new to Indy/F1 cars, I'd actually suggest you start with a better kit (Tamiya)... a kit that is more accurate, with better engineering and better parts fit, right out of the box. While it may have more parts than a simplified Monogram kit, it would actually wind up being easier for you to build an accurate, well detailed kit vs. taking a sub-par kit and trying to "fix" it as you go. I guess it depends on how important accuracy is to you, but if it was me, I'd want to start with the highest quality kit that I can get my hands on.

[pepe]

Thanks for the advice all. i'm going to take Chief Joseph's advice and just build this the way it is to the best of my ability.I'll also listen to Harry and get a Tamiya kit for my next project. A question I have is how do you know it's not a curbside version? I''d be bummed out to spend that kind of money and not have an engine! Art,thanks for the "snapshot" perspective, it makes perfect sense.Although I'm new at this I'm really enjoying it and a

forum with people like you only makes it better.

Thanks Again