Opel Kadett C Coupe GT/E 1977

[ata]

Here's a model I actually finished couple of weeks ago, but haven't put a WIP thread here and I don't have good photos of the finished model as my camera was stolen, but it has been seen in 2 modelling contests here in Finland already.

This is a resin kit made by BS Design Automodelle / Rückspiegel from Germany. The kit comes with several different decals and is not very detailed in any way and it doesn't also have an engine, nor a detailed chassis. So it was a quick build for me, finished in 2 weeks.

The packaging looked like this:




The resin body:



Then I primered the body after some cleaning the casting of the body and washing and sanding it. Testing some wheels on the model (Fujimi Blitz):





In this phase I hadn't decided if I put these wheels on the car or the steel "festival" rims which came with the kit as resin casts, which wheels I also would have had chromed from the AMT Opel GT kits.

Painted some Tamiya gloss white on the car:


This kit is not very detailed, as ai wrote earlier. Some detail parts in the kit are cast from white metal, some are resin. The windows are vacuformed and tires are cast from rubber. The kit also comes with no instructions whatsoever... but it comes with some styrene sheet bits and foil for the window trims, if the car would be built as the picture on the box. I decided to build it as the GT/E model which has black window trim and the kit also had the GT/E decals.

The chassis I just painted semi gloss black with spray paint.

I masked the areas which would come yellow and painted it with Tamiya yellow acrylic. Masked the window trim and the Tamiya masking tape leaked the black paint, but I changed the masking later, it didn't look very good in this phase.







In this phase the car is just a mock-up, not assembled yet, so the wheels are not in correct position.

Some more painting and building:



And more:

In this phase the Kadett starts to be close to ready, as in this phase I only had 1 day before the car show where the car was supposed to be in the modelling contest... the front bumper (metal cast) is being glued and the decals are on.








Here are two photos of the finished model, not taken by me in the show:


The metal transfer Opel logo in the grille is from the Tamiya Opel Astra DTM kit. The car has also Finnish license plates from the 1970's which have been in a car like this back then. Of course the front license plate is partially fallen off in the finished photo in the show...

The interior is painted with different blacks (matt, semigloss, gloss) and the interior roof + c-pillars matt white from the inside like the real car, the instruments have some white and orange in them representing numbers and the "red zone" and dials, which maybe can be seen in some of the pictures.

This was a "quickie build" about a car which I really adore. It didn't win any trophies in the shows in Helsinki and Tampere in Finland, but I wasn't really even expecting any for this kind of simple engineless and detail-less model, but to give something else to see also which many people haven't seen as a model car in 1:25.

When I get better photos of the finished model I will do a finished thread also...

Comments?

[rsxse240]

fantastic! I need a model of this car, is there an english site I might be able to order one from?

I used to own one of these in the mid 1990's. I paid $200 (US) drove it for about a year with a blown head gasket, then I finally fixed that, and WOW would it move! it was the turbo version, with silver paint and black 3 bar stripes down low on the door/side of car with the GT/Turbo script on top of it. I had so much fun in that car!

edit:

incedentally, did you know it was also marketed as an Isuzu I-Mark, and Buick-Opel by Oldsmobile (which is what mine was) and I'm sure there were other variants.

[evilbob]

Here in Australian it was a Holden Gemini, with "Holden-Isuzu" on the rear. It was one of GM's first attempts at a 'World Car'. Love to get one of these and make it a Holden. Nice work!

[sportracer02]

Hi,

do you have any experience with resin model to say, how the kit quality is? Whenever I see some built Opel models from this company, I must say, that these are of bad quality. Even an experienced modeler is hardly able to make a good model out of these kits.

OK, the price isn´t so high, but the level of details isn´t exicting.

The body looks like a bad resin Copy of the Bburago model.

Nevertheless, I guess you made a good job on this kit. I don´t know, how experienced you are, but maybe you could work a little bit more exact (f.e. window-trim, panel-lines, rear-lights, etc).

[ata]

The quality of the kit isn't very good, the body is most likely a resin copy of the Bburago diecast model and there is not much detail in the model. Even some parts of the body are not very good. The tail lights for example were not very good. With more work it would have been possible to make a better model out of this...

I have earlier built only plastic kits in 1:24/1:25 (tens of those since the 1970's) and some resin kits in 1:43 and this one has about the same level of detail than the 1:43 resin kits, even it's a bigger scale. I wanted to build this just because of the car model which is rare as a model kit. Some of the other kits from the same company are even worse, sometimes they don't even resemble the car they are supposed to be...

I don't know if it's available anywhere else than in Germany, I orderer mine from www.werst.de and the manufacturer also sells the kit in www.bs-design-automodelle.de and the price is somewhere between 60 and 70 euros for the 1:25 kits.

As a model kit this is horrible if you compare it to almost any plastic kit, not much parts and the detail is not very good. But then again it is of a car not available as a proper plastic kit... And because I want to build Opels this is something different compared to the Tamiya Astras and Calibras (which I have plenty of as can be seen from the pictures...) Somebody more skilled or with more time this could have been built to be a better model but it would require lots of modifications to the body and fabrication of new parts or taking them from other kits. I built it mostly "out of the box, even the box wasn't very well equipped with parts"...

[deedlit]

You did a very good job on this kit despite his poor quality

I remember this car 'cos my uncle had one in the late 80's, reminds some good and happy days

Glad to know where you bought yours, I knew they also have a Vw T2 'baywindow' bus in their range of products but never found a good source to buy one; no I know and the Visa card will heat

[rsxse240]

look at the second car from the right


and here is EXACTLY my car. the little black script in front of the door on the fender says turbocharged.

[ZoomZoomMX-5]

Wow, I should have taken a picture today of the one like this at the Walter Mitty historic race at Road Atlanta. Same car, same colors! We don't usually see Opels in the US.

[rsxse240]

it very well may have been the Isuzu I-Mark, or the Buick Opel, but who knows! I know if I still had my Buick Opel, I'd have done the cosmetic mods to make it an Opel.