In the world of rally, racing few companies have had the level of success as Lancia. Its string of dominating cars started with the Fulvia. Produced from 1965–1976, and the Fulvia coupe featured a narrow, 12-degree V4 engine driving the front wheels.
Prior to Italeri’s new tool, 1/24 scale Fulvia kits were only available in resin. The Italeri 1/24 scale Lancia Fulvia HF Rally Monte Carlo 1972 plastic model kit features a fully detailed engine and suspension, a small sheet of photo-etched metal (PE) parts, and a beautifully printed set of Cartograf decals. While this is a rally-only version of the car, there are indications that a stock version may be in the works.
The kit’s engine parts break down in standard fashion with the main block divided in halves with separate oil pan, cam cover, and front cover. The fan belt detail comes molded into the front cover and it looks a bit chunky, so I narrowed it with a hobby knife and file to a more realistic size. Other bits, like the starter, oil filter, and distributor had mounting pins bigger than the respective holes and needed a little massaging to fit properly. There is an errata sheet correcting the locations of the distributor and oil filter, which are switched in the instructions. Once past those minor obstacles, the engine builds into a nice replica.
The chassis pan also serves as the interior floor, which inevitably means there will be ejector-pin marks on one surface. In this case, they were on the chassis side. Thankfully, the marks, just proud of the surface, were in locations that easily reached and sanded flush. Here, again, there were a couple of parts where pins were either too big or super tight. The instructions show drilling holes in the rear wheel wells for mounting the roll cage, but they don’t show the two that you’ll need to add up front for the skid plate.
The details for this stripped-down rally car interior look good. The door panels and dashboard are accurately molded, and decals dress up the instruments and dash. I’m not a fan of decals for seat belts — they’re two-dimensional for one, and these look too short. I think Italeri could improve the kit with cloth or PE belts. Even with the decal straps, PE buckles would have been an easy addition to the fret.
The body is molded with separate parts for the front and rear fascia. After careful study, I thought I’d be able to glue them to the body so they could be properly de-seamed and still slip the chassis assembly inside. It is doable, but be warned it is a really tight squeeze. The parts fit quite well, as did the fender flares, so filling and blending was easy. I painted the Fulvia with Cobra Motor Colors Phoenix Red over Mr. Surfacer 1000 Gray. After a gloss coat, I made a mask for the hood using the template in the decal placement guide and painted it black. Not surprisingly, the Cartograf decals went on without difficulty.
The Italeri 1/24 scale Lancia Fulvia HF Rally Monte Carlo 1972 plastic model kit has a few minor issues with some parts fits, but nothing that a couple twists of a drill bit or strokes of a file didn’t take care of. Overall, it builds into a striking replica of the 1972 Monte Carlo rally winner that will look great with my other Lancia rally cars.