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Only because I said I would, I am going to post the completed model of the Heller Renault R8 Gordini. I truly am a bit embarrassed to post it. It just isn't a good looking model. I have added a link to the WIP thread. If you want to know what a pain in the rear this kit is, please read the WIP thread. There are detail pictures there. You will also see why I built it, (it was for a friend). Here she is. Go easy on me!

Heller 1/24 scale Renault 5 Turbo Group 4 rally represents the 1982 car of Jean Ragnotti and Jean-Marc Andre. Instructions say they won with treaded rain tires, but the kit comes with slicks, which is a pet peeve of mine. I'm spending my Christmas holiday building at a remote location (undocumented wife's house on the other side of town), picked this kit because it has few parts, and should be a good warm-up for doing the Audi Quattro. It's typical Heller quality, parts are well molded with little flash and mold lines to clean up, fit so far is very good, but detail is minimalistic. If one wanted to detail this, many missing details are begging, but I'm doing Box Stock. North windows are excellent daylight, view is nice. ? Swept tools off the bench into a cigar box, no paint, no Dremel, no specialized tools brought along, using only superglue. Engine is basic, don't think the turbo is accurate, moving on. Sink depressions and ejection pin marks got filled with superglue and baking soda (from wife's pantry ?). Exhaust tip is drilled with knife. I *had to* fill the void under the intake plenum, would really have to look for it after it's assembled. Cool feature of this kit, the round pins go in square holes, almost as good as snap-tight kits (better than AMT Batmissle), so I could mock up the complete assembly, then dismantle for painting. Found some sink marks on the doors, filled with superglue/baking soda. The mirrors needed the same treatment. Ready for paint: I went home, and painted all I could. Masked and sprayed the light grey, last color for the day. I skipped painting primer, started with gloss white on the body. Good thing I'm not at home to risk touching the body and screwing it up. ? The kit has almost no dash detail, just circles with no detail or decals! I added the aftermarket gauge decals, added a clock on the block that should be the rally chronometer that really needs something! The funny thing about this kit, the doors open, so you can see the seats are molded with the floor and have giant gaps that are toy-like, no dash detail, no pedals, no seatbelts, etc. ? The interior is assembled! Tried out Alclad 'white aluminum' for the engine, intake and wheels, the heat shield is chrome aluminum, exhaust is Testors flat aluminum and steel. Plan tomorrow is to mask and paint the yellow on the body. Don't think I should push it for painting black too. Have an idea for making tread on the tires, planned to rough up anyway, and am going to weather for end of race look. Race to New Years, 5 days. ?️

I can't believe how long it took me to get around to building these models. Maybe a year! I thought they would be Winter 2015 builds. Of the bunch, the Trabant was the toughest, mostly because of the trim. With the other builds, I tried my hand at making workable hinges and it turned out ok. I used reference photos of the 1:1 cars to decide on the color schemes. Purchased some aftermarket decals for the Renault.

Ebbro's never-tooled-before Renault 4L Kit. You get several different year options (determined by the grill) in the kit. the pale green wagon is straight from the box and I've titled it a '74. The bright orange "fun machine" is called the "Plein Aire". Converted from the wagon kit with a roof and door chop-and-fill with some sheet plastic and seat conversion tossed in. It's a '76. The dark red van is mostly box stock, though it was retrograded to a '63 by modifying the front end with sheet plastic and grill/headlights from a diecast, as are the seats. The '80 pickup is the modified van, cutting off most of the van box and adding detail and a back to the cab with Evergreen stock. Fun with decals to make it a cheese truck, fun with ABS rod to make the cheese. Fun all 'round building these!

I stopped at the Detroit Resin Automotive Group booth at the recent DuPage show, and a gentleman there had a Hubley Renault Dauphine body and said it was being reproduced. Unfortunately, I didn't take note of which member of D.R.A.G. would be doing this - anyone know? I need a rear bumper for mine and he said they'd be willing to sell parts separately. Thanks!

This retro-review covers ESCI's long out of production 1/24 scale Renault 5 Rally car. I love offbeat and unusual subjects and Renault's 5, known as the Le Car here in the states, hits both of those marks. It is only a quick shoot and post as I don't have a photo backdrop or decent lighting. I just thought there might be some others who enjoy weird little cars as much as I do. I actually have two of these kits, the Gitanes and the Calberson versions. For the purposes of this post, I am picturing the Calberson version as the only difference in the kits is the decal sheets and the colors the bodies are molded in. I bought these kits in Naples, Italy at the fleet-landing gift shop over twenty years ago and just came across them in storage last weekend at my Mother In Law's.(She Who Must Not Be Named) I also found an unbuilt ESCI Gelandewagen Paris-Dakar, which I plan to start as soon as I actually get room on the table, and a Volkswagen Golf Rally car, so all in all it was a good Thanksgiving for me! I seem to remember buying the ESCI Series 1 Ford Escort rally car, the Audi Quattro rally car and a Range Rover as well. Can you guess what subject I was into back then? Maybe I'll come across them someday. I don't have any history to relay on this kit, (maybe there are some ESCI experts out there?) but I'm pretty sure ESCI produced it in other variants as well. I seem to recall seeing a red and possibly a green one in US hobby shops back in the day.All ESCI kits I have seen are packaged in large format boxes about the size of the special edition kits AMT does. There is no printed production date on these two boxes, but the cool box art paintings are helpfully signed by the artists. The Gitane's artwork was done by someone named Giglioli in 1980, while the Calberson's artwork was done by R. Cappello in 1984. The body is very good proportionally, looking better than a lot of new-tool kits I have bought. All parts are crisply detailed, with very little flash and only faint parting lines. It should require little in the way of clean up. The Calberson kit's body parts are well molded in a bright yellow, the Gitanes car's body is in a blue close to Grabber blue. The body is molded in one piece except for the hood and rear hatch which are separate. The chassis, engine and interior bits are molded in black and are on one large sprue. The only real issue with this is that the sprue containing these parts is slightly too wide for the box, meaning the guy who packed the kits had to sort of bend it to get it in. Luckily it doesn't appear to have warped the parts themselves. The interior is platform style with decent detail on the separate side panels and dash. It includes two nice racing seats for the driver and navigator. The engine is pretty simple but should respond well to detailing. The way it is designed reminds me of AMT's Volkswagen Rabbit kit of the 70s. The wheels, roll-cage and rally lights are also black and are on a separate sprue. I really like these rally lights and may have to mold them so I can put some on other kits.The windows and all lenses are on a clear sprue. Of course this sprue was not wrapped, so the windshield is a bit scratched, but it should polish out.The taillights are molded on this sprue as well, so they will have to be painted transparent red. The tires are wide, low-profiles with only a faint pebbly finish on the tread. I didn't scale them out but they fit an AMT wheel, so I'm guessing 15 inch. They also have raised outline type lettering on both sides. One side has Goodyear, the other Dunlop. The tires are fitted to three-lug Campagnolo(?) mag-style rally wheels. The decals seem in very good shape for so old a kit I think they will still be usable. The ones on the Calberson car are printed by Cartograf and represent the car as raced at the 1978 Monte Carlo Rally, and the Gitane car's were by a company called "G.Decal, Italy" The sheets in both kits are nicely done and quite thorough. For the Calberson, the only thing not included is the red stripe around the bottom of the body which will have to be painted. I don't know where ESCI's molds ended up, but I would sure love to see some of their kits back on the shelves. This is my mini-review such as it is, the pictures are not great, but I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think.

Thought I'd show you guys what I've been up to lately (other than the P40-. This won't be a full work-in-progress thread, just a few pics thrown out here & there as I get sub-assemblies completed. This was a kit I had almost completed about 25 years ago. Had everything finished and then screwed up the clear coat on the one of the side panels. So guess what. Into the box it went, and there it has sat for all those years. I found it about a month ago and decided to take as much of it apart as I could and redo what I didn't like (most of it). This looked pretty good to me so I'm leaving it. Just polished it out and called it good. I just finished the transmission/rear suspension sub-assembly this weekend. Check it out. That's it for now. More to come.

Fresh out from my third build (A Tamiya 1/24 1989 Sauber Mercedes C9), I'm taking on a double build project for a couple 1982 Renault 5 Turbo Rally... Making it a double because I'm giving one to a good friend of mine in South America (Where this particular model was very popular even as a street car), so we will make these build # 4 and # 5. Found a few reference photos... The kits... Sanding and Priming... Thank you for reading.

Hi everybody, today here's a project started years ago (at least 13 years I think), never finished because : 1) I ruined one part of the decal of the trailor when applying it. And even if I managed to get a new decal sheet set from Revell (for free, I had to thank them) I was "scared" to miss it again 2) The truck finished, felt in a total wreck in my hands because of the glue I used. There was a problem on the frame of the truck I've tried to correct the best I could Now, I've to finish the trailor and this project will be over