Background:

Aside from it's original smaller darker wheels, I think the SARD Supra is a great looking race car - with some improvements. Shame Tamiya didn't make kits of the later versions from the same team. Even in this kit I see room for both a bit of extra detail and some changes to make it more my taste.

Pros:

Good clean moulding and easy fitmet as usual from Tamiya. Fantastic transparent parts, so very very clear and shiny.

Cons:

The front wheel arches are seperate parts and whilst this makes masking easier, the contact area is pathetically small and they did ping off about 5 times during the build. Eventually I had to reinforce them. The glass parts have very little contact area with which to use for gluing them. The red parts of the car are optimistically supplied as decals. There is no engine. Not Tamiya's fault: The original car is a bit sparse on decals - like they could not find enough sponsors.

Verdict:

Mostly excellent aside from the few things mentioned in the cons section. It's one great looking race car.

Build notes:

Built over the course of about 4 and a bit weeks in April/May 2023. All of the red areas are masked and sprayed, the fiddly red decals remain unused. I've changed the wheels to Aoshima Enkei NT03+M, added a driver with seatbelts, some PE bonnet pins and added some wiring and hoses to the interior. I then used a second identical set of decals to add another AISIN to the rear wing, another Toyota/Mobil 1 to the roof, some decals to the rear and rear quarters and then used some 3rd party Sanyo decals to fill up some of the white space on the doors. All these changes make it look (to me) a much more "complete" looking race car / livery. Like so many cars I've built that have a lot of white, I always feel they look a bit grubby at the end. Even if cleaned.

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