Tamiya 1/24 scale Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren

Kit: 24290
Scale: 1/24
Manufacturer: Tamiya, from Tamiya America, 800-826-4922, www.tamiyausa.com
Price: $59
Comments: Injection-molded, 150 parts (1 die-cast), metal transfers, decals
Pros: Great detail, beautiful molding
Cons: Complicated assembly not for beginning modelers

The new Mercedes SLR kit from Tamiya was much anticipated; many car modelers can place this new model next to the company's Ferrari Enzo and Porsche Carrera GT kits.

As usual for Tamiya kits, the parts trees come bagged separately. The parts are are clear, translucent red, silver, black, chromeplated, and satin-plated chrome, and there are metal hinges and prop rods to hold the doors open. The diecast-metal chassis plate is finished in semigloss black. There are die-cut window masks for the clear parts, a small sheet of decals, and a sheet of metal transfer emblems and logos.

Prior to assembling the kit by the instructions, I separated all the body pieces and the main interior and chassis components and dry-fit them to see how everything went together. I didn't note any serious fit problems, but felt that final assembly could be tricky to make all the various body panels line up with uniform gaps. From there I cleaned up all the various parts for painting.

The chassis assembly starts with the front and rear brake and suspension components. Tamiya molded the brake calipers separately from the rotors, a nice touch. The upper suspension is molded to the upper chassis and interior tub.

The engine is simplified; it is molded to the engine compartment "tub" that attaches to the upper part of the chassis.

The engraving is top-notch, and the assembled engine compartment looks complete. Tamiya made smart use of the intake parts and trapped a separate supercharger between the engine engraving and the intake. There are specific instructions how to paint the various colors of the intake, and there are decals provided for extra detail.

In test-fitting the hood to the chassis I found the intake held the hood too high above the front bumper. I removed the intake and used my motor tool to remove about 1/16" from the female attachment post of the intake and it fit properly. This was the only fit issue I encountered with the chassis, though the screws holding the diecast chassis to the upper chassis/interior tub were tight, a large screwdriver was necessary and I had to be careful not to damage the interior/engine details as I tightened the screws.

The diecast chassis detail is invisible. The screws are hidden behind plastic panels and nobody will know that the chassis is not plastic. The diecast chassis doesn't hurt the detail of the finished kit whatsoever.

The interior pieces are molded to facilitate painting a two-tone color scheme, and the instructions give you three options for painting the interior. You will still need to do some masking if you choose one of the two-tone interior colors. Interior assembly was straightforward with no build problems; the engraving of the seats and dash components is impressively crisp.

The body is molded with separate door jambs, separate doors, separate side louvers/ rocker panels, separate mirrors, separate front bumper, and separate hood. You need to plan your painting accordingly to make sure that all panels will match. I painted the components separately for the first color coats, and for my second round of color I taped the body together so that I could be sure that all the colors of the various panels matched. There is little secondary detail painting once you've painted the body, just a bit of black trim around the door openings and a small strip of black on each door.

Final assemblies went together reasonably well. The glass is engineered to require little or no glue, the side windows are designed with large tabs that can be glued inconspicuously. The front and rear windshields are designed to snap into place. I had to carefully open the doors to get my thumb inside the roof to help snap the windshield in place at the top. The rear glass snap tabs were too large; I shaved most of the two lower snap tabs with my knife to get the glass to snap into place w/o risk of damaging the paint on the decklid. The outer taillight lenses also fit without glue. You must make sure to glue the door panels into place exactly, or the doors themselves will not fit. The final fit of the doors is tight.

Pay attention to the instructions in step 18 when paint the door panels; Tamiya left off the reference to paint part of the door panels the body color. They show shaded areas to be painted in the interior colors, but you should paint the unshaded areas that contact the outer-door skin the body color. Look at reference pictures of the real car if you need more hints for painting.

The finished model looks great. The doors fit very tight and are a bit tricky to open. The hood pivots in two directions. The small details are visible and lend a high-quality appearance to the model. At first glance the parts count seemed low, but there were nearly 150 parts and building this one out of the box required about 20-25 hours of work.
- Bob Downie