Studio 27 Lotus 79 super-detailed

Studio 27 1:20 Lotus 79 black beauty French GP 78.

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One of the most beautiful F1 cars ever done was the JPS Lotus 79. I got hooked on F1 in 1973 and Lotus was immediately one of my favorite cars – at that time the classic JPS Lotus 72 – also a beauty with its sleek design.

About the kit: This is a metal kit, not a resin. It’s a “full” kit and not a curbside like the typical Studio 27 kits. And when I say “full” do I mean “full”. If you look at the pictures do you soon realize how super-detailed the kit is – much more than for instance the Tamiya Williams FW07. To build a metal kit is very time consuming, but it’s also a very interesting challenge. The kit is very ambitious with all those details. But before you get to enthusiastic do I need to warn you – what you see on those pictures is NOT what you get from the kit. I have spent endless hours improving and correcting the kit with a lot of details. But it’s like a good Tamiya 1:20 kit – the basic is there for all the super detailing. The kit is very expensive (25.000 Yen), so I don’t expect beginners to buy this kit. And it’s NOT for beginners. It’s much more difficult to build than a corresponding plastic kit, where everything fits much better and you get a lot “for free” – like not having to polish all the parts before they are being painted.
The price is high, but actually cheap compared to the Studio 27 curbsides, where you get a much more simple kit. Decals are very nice, but be careful – you can’t get replacements from Studio 27 and it’s easy to damage one of the many decals. The building instruction is not up to the standard of the rest of the kit. There are several mistakes and you have the feeling the instruction is not done by a person who has actually been building the model. Also the photos of the building process in black and white are printed in a bad quality. The other nightmare is the authenticity. It’s very, very difficult to find technical photos of the real stuff car. I have endless photos of the Team Classic Lotus 79 from Goodwood FOS and the kit seems to be based on this car, which is wrong, since it’s a converted back 79 B (79 season Martini livery). The best source is Studio 27 own homepage, where 2 versions have been build (very well indeed) and its obvious the builder had access to some very good references. I contacted Studio 27 to try to get a copy of those data, but without any success. Why does Studio 27 not include a CD-Rom – that would really improve things. Be careful about the recent released book covering Lotus 78 and Lotus 79 – almost all the technical photos of the Lotus 79 are from the restored cars and NOT from the original cars.
I want to send a big thank you to Clive Chapman from Classic team Lotus for taking time to shoot and send some photos of the car totally stripped – try to ask Ron Dennis about that. Also a big thank you to my very good friend Flemming Hansen for many of the photos supplied.
I used almost all of the parts from the kit – one of the few things where I made an “upgrade” was the seatbelts, which was taken from the excellent F1 Specialities – much better than the ones delivered by Studio 27.
It’s a typical project, where the risk not finishing the project is about 90 % and you really need a lot of love for this car. But boy it looks good when it’s finished and YES – finally do I have a superb replica of the car we all loved from the first moment we saw it.
I have a lot of other F1 metal kits waiting for me. Model factory Hiro is by far the best supplier – wait until you have seen the Ferrari 126 CK from Monaco 81 – make Tamiya look like beginners. I just hope the doctors are able to increase my life with about 500 years, making it possible for me to finish just a few of the endless projects waiting in the pipeline.

Best regards

Allan Nielsen
Copenhagen, Denmark


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An absolutely stunning effort, thank you for sharing :)

Great model. Great build.

Great work.

pure beauty in her's perfect little black dress. Amazing build, true classic. Great job.

Now that is a stunning model!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great work!!

Oh wow! I love it! Another crazy detail F-1 :)

Is it possible to put it together in one piece? If so, can you do it and show us more pictures? Thank you :)

Superb work, the Type 79 has to be one of the most beautiful F1 machines ever, thanks for showing it to us. Anything else on the bench?
I've got one of these kits stashed away, the '78 Austrian GP version - Ronnie's last win :(

Awesome! I love JPS cars. Great job

:grinyes:

Murray

Gorgeous work! I didn't know such all-metal kits were available. Very cool job, color me impressed!