1:20 Scale Imai Mini Cooper

[Viccario]

This has been rebuilt from an approximately 25 year old Imai Mini Cooper that I found in my loft. It was in a sorry state and hand been brush painted. I stripped it all back using brake fluid and repsrayed in a green that looked about right for a Mini Cooper.

It should have been a simple rebuild but there were a lot of fiddly and time consuming bits. I made my own glass as the original was a gluey mess and even the headlight surrounds had to be made shorter to look correct.

The most fiddly thing to do was the black rubber surround around the edge of the bare metal foil on the front and rear windows.

It is 99% complete, I have the wipers to do and need to decide about whether to leave the exhausts that I made up on the car or go for a smaller single pipe. There were also a few bits missing including door mirrors, door handles and steering wheel!

Hope you like it, comments welcome.

[M1CRO]

Thats an excellent Restoration of a mini...Good job indeed...

If I were to give any criticism.It would be the Exhaust..Just looks to me like an upgrade,Some kind of Pipe upgrade.But other than that..I think the mini is a work of art in its own right and you did a great job bringing this one back to life.

Well done.

M1CRO.

[Viccario]

Thanks for the comments.

I think I agree with you regarding the exhaust, I will probably change it to be a single central exit pipe as the originals were.

The twin large ones shown were an experiment and I haven't fixed them in place properly yet so they can easily be removed.

I decided to do a kerbside model because the original was so basic but thought it would still be worth trying to make the details that are visible look convincing.

[Technoman]

Awesome looking Mini. I think a more period small single exhaust would be the perfect finsihing touch.
Didn't Imai also make a Monte Carlo rally version of this in 1/20 as well?