MSRP: $25.75
www.dragonusaonline.com
The original Mini automobile first hit the streets of Britain in 1959,
as the British Motor Corporation's answer to the foreign-built "bubble
cars", which were beginning to flood onto Britain's roads. The
bubble cars appeared in response to the Suez Crisis of 1956, which had
brought on "petrol" rationing. BMC Chief Executive Leonard
Lord, who hated bubble cars, instructed his brilliant designer Alec
Issigonis, who had previously designed the Morris Minor, to produce
something that would drive the bubble car off the road. His instructions
were to design a car that would seat four, use an existing BMC engine
and be smaller than anything else the corporation currently produced.
Initial sales were slow, as with the Mini loaded down with innovative
new features (such as the engine turned sideways and mounting the gear
box beneath it in the oil sump), many potential buyers thought it too
complex. However, it soon caught on with the "in set", such
as film star Peter Sellers, pop stars the Beatles, and even Her Majesty,
The Queen. Adding to this was the car's brilliant success in motor racing,
especially in rallies such as the Monte Carlo, which it won three times.
It became one of THE great success stories of 1960's Britain, the Swinging
Sixties, and the Mini was seen as a "swinging" kind of car.
Sales rose and fell for various reasons over the Mini's production life
and just when things might look grim, something like the 1973 Oil Crisis
would come along to revive flagging sales. In the end production finally
ceased in 2000, and over its 41-year production life, 5,400,000 Minis
were produced, making it by far the most important British car of all
time. In 1997, The Global Automotive Elections Foundation decided to
choose a Car of the Century, and via a distinguished committee of world
automotive engineers and designers, selected a list of 200 cars to put
on a ballot. These 200 were whittled down to 26 via a panel of 132 automotive
journalists from 33 countries, together with internet voting from the
public around the world. These 26 were then further reduced to five
finalists by a jury of professional automotive journalists. First Place
went to Ford's Model T, with Second Place going to the BMC Mini, ahead
of such automotive luminaries as the VW Beetle, Ford Mustang, and Porsche
911. In such high regard is the original Mini held by those who know
and love automobiles.
When The Rover Group (what remained of BMC) fell upon hard times in
1994, BMW of Germany stepped in to try to rescue the firm. (Of interest
is that the BMW boss at the time, Bernd Pischetsrieder, also happened
to be a cousin of the Mini's designer, Alex Issigonis). However, this
rescue bid failed, and BMW sold off almost all of the assets, with Land
Rover going to Ford, and MG and Rover eventually ending up in Chinese
hands. However BMW did hold onto the Mini name, and in 2001 launched
the "New Mini", or the "Bini" as it is refered to
by those who love the original Mini (as in BmwmINI).
The new Mini is technically unrelated to the original Mini design, and
in fact sat side by side, the new Mini is noticeably larger than the
original, being fully 20% larger in both length and width. The new Mini
is also aimed at a completely different market than its predecessor,
which was a low cost entry level automobile whereas the "Bini"
is not, the "base" model starting at $20,000 and rising dramatically
based on various options packages available.
At which point we arrive at the current models under discussion, Fujimi's
1/24th kits of the BMW Mini Cooper and Mini Cooper S "with John
Cooper Works Kits". The BWM Mini Cooper comes in two main models,
the Cooper and the Cooper S. The former has a 1.6 liter 16 valve 4 cyclinder
engine, rated at 118hp. The Cooper S comes with the 1.6 liter 16 valve
engine, but in turbo charged form, offering a big upgrade in power to
172hp. The car models differ externally mostly at the front end, as
a result of the different engines, with the Cooper S having a front
hood air intake that is missing from the Cooper. Internally the kits
appear almost identical. However, according to the Mini USA web site
(www.miniusa.com)
there are literally hundreds of different options
one could build into the two models so that a potential buyer can very
much personalize "their" Mini.
Fujimi has built their Mini kits around a series of common sprues, together
with additional sprues to allow for specific "S" parts, and
the "John Cooper Works" parts. For those of you who don't
know, John Cooper Works is a private British firm that has been involved
with race cars in Britain for three generations. The original Minis
back in the 60's had Cooper "tuner" packages available, and
BMW has continued the concept with their Minis. Most of the John Cooper
Works additions come in the form of uprated engine, suspension and exhaust
components. Since the Fujimi kits are "curbside", there aren't
that many additional parts. Most noticeable between the kits are different
mag wheels, and exhausts parts.
The kit parts for both models are flash free without any noticeable
ejection pin marks in visible places. There are a couple of parts in
each kit with sink marks, parts D3 and D4, interior door sections. The
sink marks are in easy to reach places, and should pose no difficulties
in filling and sanding out. Detail on the parts is well executed and
very crisply molded.
Instructions for each kit are well laid out, and the painting sections
appear to call out colors from the Mr Color/Gunze Sangyo range. Thankfully
the colors are all fairly basic: Black, White, Silver, Yellow etc.,
and so any paint range can be easily substituted. Decals are well printed,
if rather basic, as one would expect for a modern car kit, consisting
mostly of interior instrument decals, plus some exterior badges. Sadly
for US modelers, the only license plates provided are for Japanese registered
vehicles, so the modeler wishing a non-Japanese car will have to look
into aftermarket license plate decals.
Looking over the instructions, note that if you follow Fujimi's notes,
you can only build the two kits in an automatic transmission style,
with two pedals on the floor, plus the automatic "stick".
However, the parts to build a manual transmission car ARE included in
the box; you just have to look for them, Sprue E, parts E9 and E15.
The Cooper and Cooper S come with a 6 Speed manual transmission or an
optional 6 speed automatic. Note also that the Mini Cooper S is a right
hand drive vehicle, while the standard Mini Cooper kit is left hand
drive, a curious difference.
One interesting feature of these two kits is the clear glass parts for
the windows. On every other Japanese automobile model kit I own (numbering
about 100 kits), the glass for the windows come in one or two pieces,
and mount from the inside. In these two Fujimi kits, the glass is in
four parts, and mounts from the outside. It will be interesting to see
how this method works. Also note, each of the side window parts has
a molding flaw in it, a sort of "line" through the glass.
It isn't raised, but is "inside" the glass, and on each part,
it is slightly different. Since it appears on both kits' parts, one
presumes this will occur in every kit??
When I volunteered to review these two kits, I did so with the intention
of doing a "family build" with my two children, ages 8 and
12. As a family we are "Mini Mad", owning two original Minis,
1978 and 1981 vehicles built in New Zealand. And since their debut in
2001 the kids and I always play "spot the Bini" on our trips
about town. So I thought, "What an ideal project for the kids and
I". However, the kits will require some tricky masking around the
lower bodies of each model in order to get the black surrounds looking
right. The same will be true for the externally installed windows. Time
will tell how this all goes, however the family plans on having some
fun trying!
Building the Binis:
I must admit that these kits are NOT for beginner modelers, unless you
don't care what the end result looks like. Issue one is the tricky masking
required on both models, as I mentioned in my "first look"
section above. The second issue is the tricky nature of the glass parts,
and the way the wheels mount to the chassis.
The instructions that Fujimi provide the modeler are very user friendly,
and the kids and I had no problems figuring everything out despite almost
everything being in the Japanese language. One exception is the painting
instructions, where at one point in the modeling process, a color number
is called out which isn't actually listed on the paint description chart.
Oh well, either find a list of Gunze acrylic/Mr Color lacquerer numbers
on the internet, or wing it!
The first "issue" that we ran into was from Section 1, the
wheels. Fujimi has the modeler install one part V1, vinyl washer, on
each wheel. When the kids went to mount the wheels to the chassis in
Section 4, they found them very difficult to slide onto the pins housed
in the brake parts, due to excess friction. In fact, they shattered
the assembly on more than one occasion. I would suggest rubbing a pencil
"lead" onto the brake "pins", to reduce the friction,
or better yet, replace the vinyl V1 part with a suitable section of
plastic tubing, and simply glue the wheels onto the brake housings.
The body of each model is in three main parts, a very large main body
part, and then a smaller front and rear section (parts F3 and F4 for
the Mini Cooper kit, and parts N5 and Q1 for the Mini Cooper S kit).
Make sure you look at a real Mini to see how tightly fitting these parts
are, and test fit and modify as appropriate as our parts didn't fit
as tightly as required. Especially note the wheel arch areas of the
smaller front sections, these should be almost seamless.
Next hurdle comes with the four main glass window sections for the kits,
parts G1, G10, G11 and G5. There is some very tricky masking involved
here, including masking tight curves. Also, when you go to install the
four parts, trying to test fit them is tricky as well, four parts that
must fit snuggly, and only two hands to grasp them with! Tape was used
to help out here. Note to Fujimi: on many of their racing car kits Tamiya
gives the modeler pre cut painting masks, and a similar kit component
would have been a blessing on these two kits
The next hurdle is masking the wheel arches, which are black as compared
to the main body color. A check of the real Mini reveals these to be
separate parts from the main vehicle shell parts, with clearly demarcated
"panel lines". In a perfect world, Fujimi would have provided
the wheel arches as separate parts as well, which would have made for
almost fool-proof painting. At the least, a nicely indented "panel
line" would have helped with the cutting out of the masks required
and preserved our sanity. Again, curves are involved, and the flared
wheel arches on the kit parts gently flow and flatten out, making acurate
masking EXTREMELY difficult. I took over from the kids here, and despite
multiple tries, still botched it. NOT a job to be rushed.
Main body painting: given that the children are not well versed with
airbrushing, and you can't do anywhere near a credible job painting
high gloss car finishes with a paint brush, we decided to try out Tamiya's
lacquer aerosol spray cans. TS-34 Camel Yellow and TS-49 Bright Red
were chosen as suitable colors. The cans were shaken vigorously for
5 minutes and then placed in hot tap water for a further 5 minutes to
heat up the paint, as warm paint flows more smoothly than cool paint.
Then shake the can for another 1 minute prior to painting.
Learning experience: DO NOT apply more than one very thin coat of this
paint at a time. Then let dry for about 15 minutes before applying a
second, very light coat. We discovered that the paint is loaded down
with propellant gas! If you apply a thick coat, or too many thin coats
in quick succession, the gas bubbles to the surface and you get a finish
that looks like the surface of the moon: burst bubbles that don't spread
out, leaving craters! So a very thin coat, one pass of the can for each
surface area, and then STOP. Let stand for 15 minutes, and then go for
a second pass. STOP again for 15 minutes, before a third pass, and 15
minutes later, a fourth. ANY wet paint build up resulted in air bubbles
frothing the surface! This said, the paint is AWESOME, drying quickly,
with a very high gloss to the surface, and very hard once it has dried
for a few days. (As a side note: I "decanted" a decent amount
of both colors into separate glass jars by spraying the paint down a
short plastic milkshake straw. The paint bubbled away furiously for
a number of minutes, and then continued to de-gas for a further 24 hours.
Once fully de-gassed, I was able to spray coat after coat, leaving only
about 1 minute between coats, with no bubbles appearing at all. I highly
recommend this process for anyone capable of using an airbrush).
Finally, when mounting the main body to the chassis, make sure you don't
twist the body shell trying to mount it, or the four windows will pop
off, being mounted only with white glue type cement, as is required
with such clear parts.
The above might sound like we had a bad time with these kits. Yes and
no. The detail on the kit parts is very nice, and with the exception
of the window masking and mounting, along with the wheel arch masking,
things went very nicely with construction and painting. The Tamiya spray
can problem involving propellant bubbles was solved through trial and
error, and having read this review, you won't have any excuse for not
getting it right!
These two kits are highly recommended to those modelers experienced
with masking and painting car model clear parts, and tricky curves.
The kits are well detailed, and produce accurate models if approached
in a cautious manner. Despite our hick-ups, the kids ended up with two
very colorful models for their bedroom book shelves. Had Fujimi provided
window masks and produced the kits with separate wheel arches, things
would have been a breeze. But you go with what you are given, and ultimately
these two kits produce very nice models.
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