1/24 Tamiya Toyota GT-1 TS020 (TAM 24222)
This kit represents the Toyota GT-1 as raced in the Le MAns 24 Hour race 0f 1999. It can be built as either the No. 3 car of Katayama, Suzuki and Tsuchiya or the No.1 car of Brundle, Collard and Sospiri.
In my opinion this was the best looking sportscar ever made and the kit captures the lines of the actual car very well. Upon opening the box you will find 4 sprues of parts, One black containing the undertray, monocoque,Engine parts and wheels etc, One White containing brakes and body parts, one clear containing the windows and light covers and one chromed part with the turbos, exhausts and radiators. In addition there are the two main body parts moulded in white, two sheets of excellent decals, a tyre bag, tyre decals and a masking sheet for the white areas on the body.
Construction begins with the engine, rear suspension and gearbox, standard for most Tamiya race car kits. This whole area of the kit is extremely well detailed and a convincing replica can be made by simply following the paint callouts given in the instructions, for the more adventurous builder the use of carbon decal would give an extremely realistic engine area due to the inclusion of all radiator ducting and brake cooling ducts, Like I said before, this is one extremely detailed engine bay for a standard kit.
Following assembly of the engine construction moves onto the monocoque and interior of the car. In my opinion this is where tis kit excels, anyone who is familiar with this car will be aware of the aerodynamics used and how the radiators are cooled and the whole ducting of air through the body and past the monocoque is true in this model. The whole tub, front suspension, cockpit and firewall area is a model in itself, the only real dissapointment with the standard kit is the lack of any real seatbelts, these are covered with a simple decal, more on that later...
The bodywork is the final major stage in the construction of this kit and the entire outside shape of the car is moulded in 9 major parts. This is also where one of only two errors I could find in this kit occurs. The colour scheme of the car is a 'marlboroesque' red and white and the kit supplies masking seals to cover the white areas while the red is painted. In the instructions it says to only use masking seals A and B which leaves two unused, and unlabelled, masks on the sheet. If you follow the instructions you will end up with a 'flat topped' triangle on the front of the car and a simple white band around the air intake on top of the car. However, these should both be triangles and if you use the other two masks that are included you will get the proper paint scheme. The second error is also to do with the marlboro type colouring of the car, on the decal sheet there are some red triangles that are not called out, these should be used on the white areas on the rear wing to again give the desired white triangle look of the real car.
The final steps are some additional engine bay items, more ducts and some stiffener bars and the wheels and tyres.
Once assembled this kit looks fantastic and as I mentioned earlier it could be made to look stunning with the use of aftermarket parts. Scale Motorsport produces an excellent templated carbon fiber decal set that I used on my model as well as a photoetch set. I also used their 1/24 racing harness set to increase the realism on the interior.
As expected from a Tamiya kit the fit and finish of all the parts is excellent, even the chrome plating is comvincing enough not to strip off. If your into sportscars and want an excellent addition to your collection you have to get this kit. I would rate this kit a 9 or a 10 but due to the errors in the instructions and the potential for someone to make a model that is not true to the car I will drop this score down to an 8.
Thanks for reading