Fiat 131 Mirafiori Portugal 1980

Another famous rally car: The Fiat 131 Mirafiori, one of the most succesfull cars in the late seventies.
I wanted to build the car Walter Röhrl and Christian Geistdörfer drove to victory in Portugal 1980 and I used one of my old Esci kits to do this, not the reissued model by Revell. Since in Portugal there were special stages on tarmac as well as on gravel I decided to build the Esci kit "as it was" - with wide wheels and slicks Fiat used for tarmac (Revell's tyres are wrong for those wheels).
I added some additional lights taken from Tamiya's Renault 5 Turbo, hood fasteners (PE parts) by Racing 43, mud flaps, antenna by Sakatsu and driver figures by Tamiya. Because the decals in the kit were very old and of bad quality, I used those by Revell which are much better. The rally plates for Portugal are self made, same for the decals on the driver's helmets.

http://www.pmv-frankfurt.de/files/fiat_131_portugal_1980_02.jpg

http://www.pmv-frankfurt.de/files/fiat_131_portugal_1980_07.jpg

http://www.pmv-frankfurt.de/files/fiat_131_portugal_1980_04.jpg

http://www.pmv-frankfurt.de/files/fiat_131_portugal_1980_03.jpg

http://www.pmv-frankfurt.de/files/fiat_131_portugal_1980_12.jpg

Hope you enjoy those Pictures
Stefan

Excellent stuff - one of my favourite ever rally cars.

Nice work and the weathering is very good :-) Like the dio too ! Thomas

Amazing Job! Congratulations!

Wow !!!
Looks just like the real thing.
Nice weathering too. :redface:

I used one of my old Esci kits to do this, not the reissued model by Revell

This kit is from the same tooling, because Esci is the original, then Esci/Revell reboxed it also in the 70's, then Humbrol did that again in 1981, Italeri in 2004 with a new decal sheet, and Revell again in 2007 also with new decals.

The last 2 are famous for reboxing kits.

Looks great!

For once it is not the Monte Carlo version ! :) Beautiful rendition of one of my favourite rally cars of all time ! ;)

Lovely job! The plastic pig was a great looking rally car from a boxy saloon.

Could maybe do with some weathering on the wheels.

I have one of these Tamiya 1/20 kits unfinished in my stash.

You really have done a top job on that.

Weather the wheels, my impression is they have just started the stage with the tarmac spec tyres and are yet to get them dirty.

You really have done a top job on that.

Weather the wheels, my impression is they have just started the stage with the tarmac spec tyres and are yet to get them dirty.

You are right - they have just started after changing wheels for a tarmac special stage.
That's the idea behind, for which I was inspired by a picture I found in the book "Rally" by Reinhard Klein:
http://www.rallye-fanshop.com/RALLYE-Buecher/Historie/Rally-Reinhard-Klein::471.html
Röhrl / Geistdörfer with their Fiat on tarmac - clean wheels, dirty car!
Regards
Stefan