The Kit

The kit is produced by Model Factory Hiro in Japan. It is primarily in resin and white metal, but the box also contains lots of piping, vacformed transparencies, springs, screws and nuts and bolts.

It comes in a very big, very sturdy box, with the large resin parts swathed in bubble wrap, and the many metal parts in resealable bags which are cling wrapped to a board. There’s no risk of the parts being damaged in transit. The box is too big to fit in my modest photo booth, so here it is on the shed floor.

Inside can be seen the size of the parts. At 1/12 scale this is going to be a large model. (I’ve taken most of the bubble packing off here.)

The orange folder serves to protect the decal sheets, and carries corrections and amendments to the instructions. On the back there are some useful templates for cutting the transparent parts.

The instructions are very high quality, with clear three dimensional diagrams.

Here is a selection of the resin parts, starting with the main body of the car.

The tyres have a printed logo already applied, and there is no hint of a mold seam, the bane of every car modeller’s life.

The wheel rims are superbly turned in aluminium, with no hint of burring or cutting tool marks.

There’s a small bag of metal parts, with springs and screws contained.

Another with wire, heat shrink tube, and hoses.

The thinner PE sheet contains the radiator grilles and air intake meshes. This is very finely done, and attachment parts so fine one part came away with just light handling.

The thicker PE provides wing end plates and various brackets, and the seat belt buckles.

The decals for the green areas and dashed lines. I’m hoping to use these to make masks and paint all this.

The main sheet, with some handy blocks of the colours should any patching be needed.

The white metal splitter. 

Some of the smaller resin parts come on molding trees.

This is the massive collection of white metal parts that I, frankly, couldn’t be bothered to lay out to photograph. There’ll be plenty of chances to see them during the build. The metal parts are very well cast, with a lovely smoothly textured surface.

In the box, the kit exudes quality. If it builds as well as it looks it’s going to spectacular fun to work on. Is it worth the high price tag? That’s a very subjective judgement, but I intend to build this over a very long time, one stage at a time, and savour the process. I think the ratio of expense to fun will be favourable!