Tabla de contenidos para June 2018 en Scale Auto

Don’t be alarmed, but there are diecast cars in Scale Auto. There, I’ve said it. As long-time readers of Scale Auto Enthusiast and Scale Auto (this begins our 40th year) know, we have a long history of including die-cast models in our pages, just not so much lately. Here’s the deal. Die-cast cars are outselling plastic model cars these days and like the Chevy or Ford dealer that has more crossovers and sport-utes on their lots now than cars, we want to keep up with the times. That said, Scale Auto will always be primarily about building and creating model cars, mostly plastic. But die-cast has its place and to be truthful, offers more variety in more scales. Case in point is this month’s story that Assistant Editor Robby DeGraff…

First generation Ford Broncos aren’t merely popular, they’re hot. Ford’s iconic answer to the compact International Scout and Jeep CJ was well-received when it debuted and has remained popular ever since. Now, 52 years later, Broncos remain a common sight at car shows and cruise nights; many have been upgraded through the years to more contemporary off-road specs. So it should come as no surprise that Revell’s Bronco kit has been a hit with builders; being the canvas for many outstanding builds seen on show tables since the kit’s surprise debut in 2016. When I built my first Bronco (April 2017 issue, expanded review) it whet my appetite for more, I wanted to go beyond the mostly box stock build to a more rugged off-road version. My interest stemmed from…

1970s Pro Street Pickup Growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, I came to enjoy drag racing, car shows and cruise nights. Custom-painted vans and Pro Street cars are my personal favorites, so this model with its 1970s custom van motif, low stance, and large engine and tire combo, is my own homage to those vehicles. Starting with Moebius’ 1969 Ford F-100 kit and plenty of Createx Colors acrylics, I went for a canvas of paint that was as over-the-top as I could imagine. About 100 reference photos later coupled with hours of masking and airbrushing, I managed this result, which I topped-off with two-part acrylic clear. This truck is a culmination of everything I have learned along the way in this hobby. The entire project, from inception to completion,…

The tooling of this brand-new kit depicting Ferrari’s new SF70H hybrid F1 car, does not disappoint. Made up of 154 parts molded in red, black and white, the fit is high caliber. Two sheets of decals with a lot of fitted carbon fiber, and a set of painting masks are included. The tires are well-rendered, appear to be rubber, and come with transfers for the sidewalls. Die-cut chrome Mylar mirror faces are also provided. One of two cars can be built, the No. 5 car driven by Sebastian Vettel or Kimi Räikkönen’s No. 7. The wheels roll but that is the extent of moving parts. The real car is a complicated design with all the undercuts, flowing contours, and protuberances. Painting also looks complex due to these shapes, but the…

The kit’s 128 parts fit every bit as well as expected. Provided are two rubber-like treaded tires, various poly caps and screws, a spring and vinyl tubing. Fear not, the ubiquitous screwdriver is included. Well-rendered decals are supplied for the finer parts of the paint scheme and all labeling details. Paint masks to help with the paint breaks make executing the tri-color paint job very manageable. A pair of die-cut Mylar mirror faces and traditional thorough Tamiya instructions round out the contents. I began by assembling and prepping the body parts for paint. Once the tank and front fender pieces were cemented together (make sure to sand smooth the cement that oozed out the seams), all parts were given a light coat of fine white primer used as an adhesion…

Porsche’s 968, made from 1992 to 1995, was the final evolution of a line of water-cooled, front-engine, rear-wheel-drive models that began almost 20 years earlier with the 924. Opening it up, I was surprised to see an engine included. It’s made of 14 parts and looks amazingly complete when built. Everything fits well, but the addition of wires and plumbing would put it over the top if you wanted to take it further with detailing. The chassis is simplified with 17 parts. A skid plate covers most of the front part but still has an opening where the oil pan is visible. There are small decals for the brake calipers and the disc brakes are plated in aluminum and look pretty good. Paint and detail the rear transaxle molded onto…

As part of its 1969 catalog, MPC offered a new kit of the Toyota 2000 GT Roadster. This was a surprise, given that reportedly only two or three of Toyota’s new 1:1 scale sports cars were produced as roadsters (the remaining production run of just more than 350 units were all coupes). MPC and UK-based Airfix had a joint agreement wherein they reboxed and sold each other’s products in their home markets. Airfix had just introduced a kit of the featured car in the 1967 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only. While the production run of Toyota 2000 GTs were all coupes, actor Sean Connery was too tall to fit under the coupe’s roofline, thus several were converted to roadsters for the movie production. That was the car that…

After seeing Robby’s video review of IXO’s die-cast Alpine A110 (See this clip, and more, on Scale Auto’s Facebook page in the videos section.) … Here’s what our FB friends said … Such a pretty car! -Brian Makosky Great job on these! -Kamil Kaluski It’s not too expensive either. -Jim Collins C’est si bon. -David Kamerer The DVD is coming! Just a quick note of thanks with a capital “T.” I just received my new issue of Scale Auto for April and on the editor’s Starting Line page, front and center, I am informed of the soon-to-be 35 years DVD collection of all the Scale Auto issues. I actually passed out from excitement as I’ve been waiting a long time for this to become a reality. I tried substituting Fine…

Our T.O.M. refers to a “pinhole” question that appeared in the February 2018 issue. Those who have worked with resin parts, from engine blocks to bodies, have probably at one point had to deal with pesky pinholes that show up in the most inopportune places. Several methods can be used to fill them, and “old resin caster” (his words) Gerry Chevalier offers another useful way to make pinholes disappear in resin. Putty is OK for tiny pinholes, but for anything larger here’s the faster, easier, and non-shrinking method that I use: Drill out the pinhole and use an appropriately sized styrene rod super glued into the hole. After using a bit of accelerator, trim and sand immediately. This also works well in places like the ends of fins, on the…

This is the second release from Revell of the Ford Bronco, the first being the stock version. But this Baja iteration takes it up a notch and is based on the Bill Strope Racing Team’s Bronco that competed successfully in Baja racing during the early 1970s. In fact, it was Strope who lured Parnelli Jones (the 1963 Indianapolis 500 winner) to the extreme off-road racing contests that Jones went on to score a couple victories in. Opening the box the first thing I noticed was the new Bronco’s body, featuring larger wheel openings and molded-in fender flares (front and rear), unlike its predecessor. Plus, Revell adds a new set of wheels and off-road tires to give the Bronco a proper look and stance for off-road racing. This new kit also…

This is a tale of two kits, literally. I was familiar with the Ford LN8000 that’s the basis of the racecar hauler, but the Dodge Dart Kit Car racer was new, both in model form and as a full-size car. There were differences in each kit’s execution, with the Ford overall being the easier model to build. Both kits are molded in white, with clear and chrome-plated sprues as well. The truck also has a pair of taillights molded in clear red plastic. The Ford carries its 184 parts on 12 white sprues, two chrome-plated, one clear, and the aforementioned clear red. As an older kit, there is some flash, but not a ridiculous amount. There were some odd chrome-plated choices though - I can’t imagine anyone plating the cast…

The Sauber Mercedes C9 dominated the 1989 World Sports Prototype Championship winning all but one race, and finishing 1st and 2nd at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. I had built this kit back when it was first released in 1989, and in this recent reissue nothing has really changed. Parts are molded in silver-gray with wheels and brakes in black. Clear parts are adequately thin yet optically quite good and scratch free. The decal sheet provides markings for the 1st and 2nd place cars from the first race of the season at the infamous Suzuka Circuit in Japan. Dry transfer type tire markings also are included. Being a simple curbside, the chassis is a pretty basic assembly. Suspension wise, all there is to add are the rear lower control…

1980 to 1989 saw production of Scania’s Two-Series truck line and Italeri has captured the hard working 142M flatbed with trailer quite well. Included in the box are more than 20 real rubber tires, and a plethora of bags containing parts individually separated by color. The decal sheet consists of European license plates, gauges, body markings, and stripes. Decals are thick and don’t conform to any abnormal shape even with a judicial amount of setting solution. A lower body stripe on the sheet can’t be used to match the truck on the box cover as it doesn’t reach all the way around the body to the grille. I also didn’t use the trailer markings. I found little flash or visible mold lines on the chassis parts. The only flaw were…

Yours truly is an absolute car geek, lover of die-cast and prior to joining Scale Auto, it had been an unfathomable number of years since I had built anything in plastic. My lack of model-making skills has, well, the check engine light is on. I’ll leave it at that. Italeri helps fill that void, with its new basic Modelset Starter Kit series. Everything one needs to get started is in the box: the glue, sprue cuter, the paint. It’s brilliant. I’m a huge fan of this type of kit, because it fits me. I’m 28 with a ton of hobbies, work full-time and freelance on the side, go to the gym almost every night, and travel as often as my bank account lets me. I don’t have the time to…

How to create flared race car wheel wells I’ve had several emails from readers asking how to flare wheel wells for a race car build, so I thought I’d share my favorite method in this month’s column. The trick is to keep the fender lip at about the same height as a non-flared wheel well, but extend it outward away from the body, and of course flare the fender above the wheel opening to make room for your race car’s larger tire. It’s sometimes difficult to reshape the plastic fender, therefore I like to cut it away, make an extension with sheet styrene, then blend the new piece to the body with a dose of putty. First, start by marking the existing fender lip height with respect to the body.…

I started this 1/12 scale Caterham Super Seven in 2016 and have yet one more project for it—making a removable roof for the car from sheet brass. While the real-life counterpart’s roof is made of fiberglass, for model-building purposes sheet styrene might be the logical material to use. Instead, I chose brass for its strength and rigidity After researching many options of styles, I found a Super Seven S4 that came with a hard roof. But most of what I actually discovered were homemade versions of various shapes and sizes that weren’t particularly aesthetically pleasing. Then again, the car is purpose-made and, arguably, styling isn’t a strong point.…

John Zweber’s Grid of Unique Race Cars I’ve loved automobiles my entire life. When I was four years old, I talked my father into buying a box of Shredded Wheat cereal because there was a 1954 Corvette on the back panel that you cut out and stuck together with toothpicks. I started building models with the first AMT kits and slot cars as a teenager. Then came college, family, career, and 1:1 cars. I finally got back into modeling three years ago when I retired. Road racing has always been an interest of mine and I like to build road racing cars that have striking liveries or a car that has an unusual paint scheme, and then add extra details. I also enjoy researching the actual car I’m building. What…

I’m quite the station wagon and family car aficionado, so when offered a chance to review Hasegawa’s new Subaru Legacy GT Touring Wagon, I jumped at the chance. While reissued recently, this kit does have old tooling being that it was first issued the same year as the 1:1 wagon’s debut-1991. There are 75 pieces in Hasegawa’s latest reissue. The wagon body is molded in white, chassis and body parts in dark gray, and interior parts light gray. There’s also a small tree coated in satin chrome for the wheels and mirror faces. Windows and lenses are clear, but you’ll need to buy clear red and clear amber paint for the lenses. The inside glass comes as one solid piece, and only the rear side windows have engraving for the…

Round2’s latest release of the 1959 El Camino is in their “Original Art Series.” Its box decorated with retro artwork, a poster of the El Camino and a “StreetRods” sticker. First released in 1966, this version has various engines, and custom body parts. Two engines can be built: a stock tripower 348 and a supercharged Cadillac. I chose the 348, which has an upper radiator hose but no lower. Each engine has it’s own exhaust style and its compartments have a separate radiator and battery. A firewall insert has the heater box, wiper motor and master cylinder molded on. The inner wheel wells have wiring molded on them. The frame is molded to the underbody and the bottom of the interior tub forms the engine tunnel. An 8-piece rear suspension…

Walking past Assistant Editor Robby DeGraff’s office a while back, I spied a model of a 1974 AMC Gremlin X on his desk. I immediately flashed back to my childhood in the 1980s. I remember my dad repairing a red Gremlin at the auto body repair shop he ran with my grandfather. I don’t remember what year that Gremlin was (sorry, I’m a model railroad guy), but I remember the car’s distinctive lines. In a town of 8,000 in northwest Minnesota, a Gremlin stood out. When Robby asked if I wanted to review the model, I said, “Sure, I’ll give it a shot.” Round2’s kit is a re-issue of the 1970s model produced by AMT. Parts are included to build the vehicle stock or drag; I chose the former. Since…