Improving the Porsche 910 Tamiya 1/12 scale English

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Improving the Porsche 910 Tamiya 1/12 scale

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From its beginning Porsche had built cars to be modified and raced by private owners. As the company progressed in competition, it realized that it had to build cars specifically for racing. History details that the first true competition Porsche was the 906 although even it was designed around some leftover parts from the 904. The 910 began life as the Ollon-Villars Spyder, a hill climb car that with further development became the endurance racer detailed in the Tamiya kit.

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Development at Porsche was fast paced during the mid 60's and the company would start building a new race car as soon as the previous design was just beginning competition. The 910 was powered by either fuel injected or normally aspirated 2 litre 6 cylinder Type 901 engines. Occasionally 8 cylinder engines were used as well.

This car is reported to have the shortest life of any Porsche race car. Somewhere between 28 and 31 of the cars were built and raced during the 1966 and 1967 seasons. Although it was successful in competition with class wins at Daytona and overall victory at Targa-Florio and the Nurburgring, it was overshadowed by the big displacement Fords and Ferraris of the period.
In typically Porsche practice, when it was replaced with the 907, the 910's were sold to privateers. It hard to say how many of the cars are still in existence. In my search for reference, I found what appears to be about 6 different cars. Surely there are more in private ownership.

Livery

I purchased a set of Studio 27 Nurburgring decals and had planned to build the car in that silver livery but when I was looking through old Excellence magazines for reference, I found an article on a 904 which was privately campaigned by Ben Pon in 1964-65. His cars were finished in a bright orange in honor of his home country, the Netherlands. I decided that would be a good livery for the 910.

Kit

The model is constructed from Tamiya's 1/12 Big Scale Porsche 910 #12003 and was first released in 1967. The kit has a somewhat interesting history because until recently, it was never re-released by Tamiya. Many stories reported that molds had been lost or damaged and collector prices soared to nearly $250 US.

Since the re-release, there is an adequate supply, and it can be purchased for about $70 US. In typical Tamiya fashion from their early big scale kits, the moldings are very clean, fit is superb and detail is impressive considering it was first kitted so long ago.

In addition to the base kit, I used two detail sets from Acu-stion in Japan, wiring and tubing from Detail Master and a variety of PE and resin items from Replicas And Miniatures of Maryland. I also scratch built a number of items from aluminum, brass and cast resin.

The Acu-stion sets deserve mention because they are a mixed blessing. Acu-stion is a small Japanese aftermarket producer that sells a large variety of PE and turned items.

One set consisted of six turned aluminum velocity stacks. They are neatly done with proper proportion.

The other set is a PE fret, which is very good quality with lots of relief etching. Included are four brake rotors, seatbelt hardware, steering wheel center, windshield wiper, grill panels for the front oil cooler, quick release fasteners, rear view mirror, hinge plates, a inside rear view mirror and a Porsche crest.