In 1989 I have the good fortune to have a go at stage rallying in a 10 year old yellow Mini 1275 GT, with my best man & co-driver, Dean. We completed at least 4 rallies around the East of England and ended the season with a 3rd in class!
I've built very few scale model cars: a nice Peugeot, Paris Dakar Rally car, probably some 15 years ago, and since then, two Aston Martin DB5s, which were awful! So my confidence must have been high when I set out to build a World Rally Championship Mini Countryman kit, although being one of Airfix's Starter Kits, I thought, what could possibly go wrong. Everything!
The secret of building scale model kits, is knowing which bits to paint before glueing and when to attach the delicate parts and affix decals. I thought I'd build my mini in 3 separate parts, the glass, chassis, body and fix them together at the end of the build. The glass was such a poor fit that I would have liked to have used some filler, the decals on the glass had to be fitted before fixing to the body and the body did not fit cleanly to the chassis!
If I was to make another, I would approach it as I do a model aircraft kit. Paint the interior, fit the glass and secure body to chassis. Then mask the glass and paint up as I go, fitting the wheels, mirrors and aerial at the end.
Although not happy with the final finish it does still remind me of my happy rallying years and make me wonder .. "what if" we'd continued with the sport, could our next car have looked something like this.
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The Model
Brand: Airfix
Title: MINI Countryman WRC Starter Set
Number: A55304
Scale: 1:32
Type: Full kit
Released: 2013 | Rebox (Model set)
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