Whilst I was waiting for the parcel, I began to sort out my references. The F1-2000 was of course a well photographed car - externally. Internal details, as always on modern F1, are generally the domain of industrial espionage, but in this case luck is with us. The F1-2000 was the subject of an overhead photo shoot where every component was laid out disassembled, and this appeared in the March 2001 edition of F1 Racing magazine. Also, to coincide with the Tamiya release, the excellent range of F1 Modeling magazines, available through HobbyLink Japan, extensively covered the F1-2000, and indeed eventually a special volume was released which covers just about every need for the nutcase modeler. Pick these up, and choose the level of detail you want to add. The words may be in Japanese, but the pictures are first class.

Initial Impressions

Having never built a resin kit before, I really did not know what to expect, but on opening the box I was frankly, frightened. Large chunks of red coloured, very smelly, and no doubt extremely toxic, resin. My first panic-stricken thought was "this is not a kit - this is a good, but misplaced, intention". My horror soon turned to despair when I looked further into the box. Lurking deep down underneath the tyres was a bag of white metal castings, which on first glance, one could be forgiven for thinking that they had already survived a major race impact and the parts were being shipped back to Maranello for failure analysis. And then it worsened - I found a bag containing what I can only describe as brass tacks and household pins. On a Ferrari? Excuse me…..

So, $400 buys you some strange looking lumps of resin and white metal, and a bag of sundry household items. How can this be? Maybe the instructions would allay my fears. So I opened the sealed bag, and felt instantly warmer and more cheerful. No less than three full decal sheets, including all carbon fibre, tyre decals and every conceivable cockpit marking. 

Nicely printed too - no carrier film and perfect register. Full Marlboros - perhaps not politically correct but we all have to admit that we quite happily shell out many dollars for our aftermarket "corrections" on the 20th scale kits. This is encouraging - it just might be buildable after all….

The next question was of course, how accurate is the model? At the time I had no prior knowledge of MG or their products, or if they were officially licensed by Ferrari. I can now confirm that there is no official connection, and that whatever you get in the box is the product of deduction from photographs, observation and a fair degree of inspired guesswork. Given that, it must be pointed out that the kit is pretty accurate externally, although the pedant, whilst holding the Tamiya F1-2000 in his other hand, would have a grand old time pointing out the inaccuracies. To be quite honest, this is what I actually did next. To assess the extent of any necessary corrective work, I built up the tub and cowl from the Tamiya kit, and made a direct comparison. And that was where I made my first mistake…..

Room for Improvement

By this time I had developed a little ritual. Every few days, I would get the box out, lay out the tub/cowling assembly, and mentally map out the differences to the Tamiya kit, whilst working out how to deal with them. I would then put them back, as I did not have the courage to start. Why? It's resin. It's not polystyrene. I might mess it up. Dinner's ready so there's no point starting. The dog needs a walk - I don't have a dog - but if I did it would need a walk. Any excuse. After a month of this, I finally summoned up all my reserves and stuck the top and bottom tub halves together. First thing I learnt was use thick superglue. Thin stuff runs all over and your fingers get badly stuck to the resin, which means you lose your fingerprints, and have to sand your own skin away from the model. Charming. Second thing I learnt was resin is tough stuff, and has a very sociable habit of convincing one's spouse that the smell it lets out just has to be highly toxic. She is of course correct, but unlike most modelling sundries, it is not possible to bluff this one away. So, not only can you not sand it, but when you try, the slightest abrasion results in an evacuation of the children and a serious verbal mauling. 

From that point all major modifications were carried out whilst sitting on the garage floor, Dremel in hand and gas mask on face. Enough to make your eyes water!

Before any modifications were started, I attempted to seal in the smell of the resin by covering with several coats of auto primer. We have a very good range of paints in the UK, marketed by Halfords - awful for real cars, great for models. I used their grey primer. Interestingly, given that it was my first ever experience of resin, I noted that the usual problem (or so I am told) regarding surface bubbles did not appear to be present. On further investigation MG appear to have used a different kind of resin to preceding kits - one which does not bubble, but the trade-off is that it is even smellier than normal. Unfortunately the primer didn't help much, as the smell seemed to have the uncanny ability of getting out of the slightest gap in the primer coat, so even rescribing panel lines had to be done in solitary confinement.

The first part to receive major surgery was the cowling. Here things were pretty complicated, as the external rear air outlets were cast solid and blanked off. These were very carefully excavated, and internal ducting formed from plastic card, using the good old Tamiya kit as a template. This in particular took several evenings, and I admit to inventing several new forms of profanity during this period. The end result did however look far better than just painting the rear faces black. The big problem with working in 1/12th scale, is that you cannot get away with just an impression of a 3D shape like an access panel. It has to physically exist, or the whole model does not work. So really, if there is an aperture, it should be opened up. The compromise that the MG designers have to make, however, is to produce a mould that is releasable without injection tool sophistication, but which at least shows the brave (or stupid) modeler where he should start drilling and carving. This MG have done very well - given the price, I can't see how they could have tackled it differently, and all credit to them for their efforts. I however am both brave and stupid….