Ferrari 275P
Racing cars have never been a major interest of mine. I have trouble coping with loud noises, and racing cars do tend to be noisy, of course. This made negotiating my teenage years unusually challenging; after a while I stopped going to the movies, and my musical tastes veered toward quieter styles. A few friends who understood stuck with me. And I never went to the races. Quite frankly, it simply never occurred to me as something I might do.
I do like seeing cars moving fast and being handled skillfully though, which means that though I’ve never been trackside for a race, many times over the years I’ve watched them on TV. The last few years have seen me building one while Bathurst is on, and just looking up to catch the replays. So not much of a motorsport fan either, I guess.
Ford GT 40
I find I just can’t identify with open-wheelers. I won’t attempt to argue my case, let’s just say I like a car to look like a car, and to have technology in common with a production car. That would exclude Formula 1, as well as Nascar, much of drag racing, and increasingly V8 Supercars. Yet in one of those strange inconsistencies of life, I am attracted to the older style of Le Mans cars (probably because of beauty; they look like cars) and all but the more extreme touring cars. So let’s start there. I won’t go into the intricacies of all the various formulas, just identify the cars. Oh, I’m also into rally cars, but we’ll leave them for another time.
The lede photo is a Ferrari 275P. It’s an old Monogram kit from the sixties, when many sports/racing car kits were designed to be readily adaptable to a slot car chassis. Basically what you see is what you get; there is no chassis or engine detail, and a simplified interior. As always, given an accurately-shaped body, careful detail painting works a treat.
The Ford GT in the second photo, and the Ford Mark IV in this next one, are old IMC kits, made in the late sixties, and far and away the most complex kits at the time. These have an amazing amount of accurate detail, with suspension arms made pretty much to scale; yes, that does mean they’re easy to break. These must have been quite a revelation for modelers used to assembling metal-axle screw-bottom kits of the latest annual cars. On a scale of 1 to 5, these would easily be a 5. Your average AMT or MPC annual kit back then would be a 2 or maybe a 3.
Ford Mark IV
As a nimble-fingered teen who’d been studying cars for years, I didn’t have too much trouble with them. But then I didn’t rush in; I looked the parts over thoroughly and read the instructions. I do have an unbuilt Ford Mark II from the same series, but I seem to keep putting off building it. Neuropathy and arthritis – I didn’t see them coming.
Porsche 935K
Here we have a Kremer-Porsche 935K3. A variant of the Porsche 935, itself a variant of the 911. I gather Kremer went beyond what Porsche were prepared to put their name to. This one is a Tamiya kit, a brand that has consistently among the top rank for accuracy and quality.
Lancia MC5
Lancia developed some amazing competition machines in the seventies and eighties. This Beta Monte Carlo Group 5 is an Italian ESCI kit from the early eighties, which also appeared badge-engineered under the ERTL and Heller brands.
Lancia Stratos Turbo
I’ve always been fascinated by the Lancia Stratos. It’s just so wild! Developed from Bertone’s Stratos HF prototype shown in 1971 (a Gandini design), it quickly became a rallying weapon, but in this ‘wide body’ form also competed in Group 5 touring car racing. I’m not up on the ‘seventies regulations, but this was legal. The track and wheelbase look almost identical which must have made handling, um, interesting. Skid-steer, anyone?
Renault Alpine LM5
Renault and Alpine did things differently. I assume they’d found the A310 couldn’t cut it at Le Mans. They took a clean-sheet approach, coming up with this A442B. It won LeMans in 1978.
Mazda 787B
Mazda had been racing their rotary-engined cars from the beginning, but this purpose-built race car surprised a lot of people. Even more so when it won Le Mans in 1991 with this 787B. Of course rotaries were banned; I supposed we should be thankful this beauty wasn’t disqualified on some previously-unheard-of technicality…
Golf R1
Turning to some more ‘conventional’ race cars, here’s a VW Golf. This was supposed to wear the white/yellow/orange livery of the Kamei team cars, but for some reason, I went with green. Different.
Pantera GTS3
The Gunze box describes this as a ‘Pantera GTS Racing’. Hmm. A rather radical version of an already rather radical street car, this looks like it was designed for Group 4 regulations (less extreme than Group 5). It can be hard to tell, as so many Panteras seem to have been modified from one spec to another, though there were several blue Group 4 race cars. I suspect this one is more generic, as there are no drivers’ names given and the number doesn’t seem to match an actual race car.
Pantera
This one’s totally generic! My idea of a Group 4 car returned to the street. Okay, getting more serious now…
Porsche 935
Here is a regular Porsche 935 in Jägermeister livery. Monogram gave no history of the car on the box, but this appears to be the earliest 935/76 model, as it lacks the later lowered lights. Jägermeister were quite the successful team, and it was common to see three or more kits of these cars in the shop from different manufacturers.
RX-7
Here’s an earlier rotary racer. A Gunze kit, I gather this RX7 was so well-known in Japan that they obviously felt no details were necessary… (insert sarcasm emoji here).
Ford Sierra
I remember these Sierras racing at Bathurst. When Australia adopted the international Group A Touring Car rules, anomalies like this happened. You couldn’t go to a Ford dealer here and buy a Sierra, any Sierra, so what was the point of racing it here? Still, it enabled Holden to race Commodores in Europe, so…
Skyline R30
We’re going wild again. Here’s an R30 Nissan Skyline built for the Silhouette formula, as the Group 5 cars seem to have become known in Japan. Basically a highly-modified Skyline shell over a purpose-built chassis.
Zakspeed Mustang
And even more wild, with this Zakspeed Mustang, built for IMSA competition.
Honda NSX
Honda gets a look in, with this beautiful Avex Dome Mugen NSX. Take off the fancy paint and sponsorship markings, and it looks suspiciously standard. This is a 1997 Japanese GT Car Championship racer.
Skyline R32
Which brings us back to road cars. This is the R32 Nissan Skyline that infamously (and hilariously!) beat the big V8s at Bathurst. Ford and Holden fans were livid – somebody else won ‘their’ race! Which in turn led to the formation of V8 Supercars, which over the years have drifted ever further from their origins as cars you could go and buy.
That’s it from me for today. Next time we’ll have some street cars, ones you might even have seen.
Nice group, too bad you can’t get Pedro Rodriguez standing next to the Ferrari 275P. That must have been a rare kit, I didn’t know Monogram did models like that.
I share your lack of connection to open wheel racing. I enjoy going to Mosport here in Canada every few years for vintage racing, which is not as crowded and not as loud. Although I wear earplugs at the track to preserve what’s left of my impaired hearing.
fwiw, I learned firsthand this year that a certain big box store has a wonderful hearing aid section at great prices.
I have not been to Mosport since the 80s. It has a different name now I believe. I went to Cayuga Drags many more times than Mosport.
Thanks Doug. The 275P was an old Monogram kit from the early sixties, reissued once or twice – the site I use for checking kit history (Scalemates) seems to be down just now, so I can’t be more specific. Annoying, that. But I remember buying the kit about 1990-ish, and from the cardboard of the box it had been in the store for a while.
While a Pedro figure would be more appropriate than the Stig, I’m sure he could enjoy himself in one of these!
Do you have a Calder E9? Was one of my favorites years ago…
No, I’m afraid I don’t. I don’t think its ever been done as a kit. There might be a limited-run model in 1/43; it’s amazing what some of the European makers do in that scale.
Your green Golf bears an uncannily similar resemblance to the Rheila Golf that went on to win the 1981 German Rally Championship:
Now that IS interesting – and totally accidental. I’d just built another car in the Kamei colours, and wanted a different look for this one.
(I didn’t say it was a Kamei car though!)
Excellent gallery, I am a race car fan and really enjoyed what you have done.
Slot cars was another hobby of mine in the 60s. I had two 1:32 scale Ferrari 250/275P cars. The ‘raced hard’ 250P is an Airfix body on my first scratch chassis. The pristine 275P is the Monogram 1:32 version of your kit; it wasn’t powered. The Monogram tooling was spectacular, the penny shows how small those injection molded wire wheels were. I can’t imagine a tool and die maker carving those molds out of solid steel. To this day, I have never seen a more realistic wire wheel.
The Nassau Grand Sport is my favorite Corvette, also a Monogram, in this case a 1:32 scale ready-to-run slot car. I did more ‘lightweighting’ and won a lot of races.
Thanks David. Monogram was an interesting company. It seemed they could turn their hand to anything. There were all those hot rods, and the caricature/cartoon kits where accuracy wasn’t an issue, then they could turn around and do those super-accurate classics – and those wheels in these racers. The more I have built, the more I have become aware of the degree of difficulty there must have been in producing the tooling for them. As you say, carving those out of solid steel, especially using the technology available to them sixty years ago… amazing.
I lost the Ferrari picture!
Another try –
Help!
If a picture’s not posting, try reducing the file size. If it’s 1,200 pixels or less (in the bigger dimension), it should post here. And unfortunately only one picture per comment will post. Hope this helps.
LIke Eric says. I use Irfanview (it’s freeware, and an amazing program which does way more than I’ve ever explored), and resize my pics to 1024×768, which is one of the choices it gives you. Regular digital pics straight off your phone or camera just won’t fit.
The rotaries were kind of banned from Le Mans, and kind of not. An argument that will go on until the end of time. The race went to a rather tight engine formula requirement that cut out the more novel power plant choices. The rotary may have been targeted, or maybe not. In any case, the 1991 winner is a car for the ages, because it won the race. Had it come in second, no one would be aware of its existence. Almost all factory Mazda rotary Le Mans racers were done in a conservative (and rather boring!) white paint job with blue trim. The one car that went with a bizarre livery is the one that won the race and is famous.
The RX-7 livery is roughly a mash-up of the two 1979 IMSA racers, one of which was in white and green, and the other done up in white and red/orange. The actual cars used black numerals in reflective white roundels (7 and 77, respectively). Large red “RX-7″s in a slightly ornate typeface were placed on the quarter windows, as Mazda was all-in on promoting the car in the first year of its manufacture.
Interesting info on those Mazdas, thanks Dutch. Kind of barred and kind of not – yeah, that figures!
For a while there Tamiya seemed to be modelling each year’s Le Mans winner; there are others I haven’t built (Jaguar, Mercedes…). You’re sure right in calling that a bizarre livery though. The orange and green had to be masked off and painted separately, and all those broken white line separations between them were separate decals. It’s the only kit I’ve built that had two sheets of decals because they couldn’t fit them all on one, and I pretty much swore off building race cars after that! Now that you mention it, I have seen pics of the other white and blue cars which I’d totally forgotten about. As you said, boring. I’m glad this one won.
GIven that Gunze did some other IMSA cars, I’m not surprised about the RX7 fitting that category. So it kind of straddles the line between being accurate and generic. Hmm.
Bathurst has become boring? Well yes it has when it turned into taxi cabs Falcons V police cruisers Holdens it became tedious, one of the reason Aussie’s best race driver from NZ changed categories and now plays with NASCARs, but a drive around Mt Panorama is something that isnt a race car is interesting or was before they used cameras to enforce the speed limit, not that I broke it by much in my Kombi but my Centura was fun anything I owned got a trip around there just for fun.
No Sierras in OZ, yeah I noticed that they were sold in NZ to update Cortinas but only in wagon at first, very ordinary cars actually unless you got the Cossie turbo but the powers that be determined it would be taxis v police cars for Aussie race fans now its even worse because they race two door coupes not Touring cars.