Honda VFR English

Motorcycles/Review

Archive models: Tamiya Honda VFR750R 1/12 scale

Ref. #14057

by Mario Covalski

During more than 20 years Tamiya was offering, to the modelers, excellent 1/12 scale motorcycles kits. Those models were successful then as they follow being now, the diversity is not spectacular, however Tamiya have added more than 70 different models to the collection, without mentioning the different versions and accessories, like the driver figures. Contrary to others Tamiya's products, most of these kits were permanently available, either for the dealers permanent stock, or for the continuous reissues that Tamiya has made.

The truth is, that for newcomers to this scale and in generally speaking, to modeling, it will be a nice surprise to find so many kits available, and it's likely that they only know the models produced during the last years. Obviously it's not possible to find reviews of those old issues, so we will present in next months, several notes about these models, and we'll try to show them with full details. We will choose the most interesting, like the race ones, and others that were the most outstanding then. This is the case of the Honda VFR750R that we present here.

The kit

The objective of this article, it's not to explain building details, or specific techniques, just to show the models and some pictures if they are available, such as in this case. The VFR is a kit developed in 1988, of excellent quality, and at that time, together with the Yamaha FZR750, were the best that Tamiya offered in 1/12 scale.

The VFR750 were a direct development of the competition models. Because of its advanced technology, the enthusiasts had then a legal street scale model, that represented the news about motorcycles.

Photo of the "The Encyclopedia of the Motorcycle" by Peter Henshaw

I built, the model shown here, in 1989. In that time I believed that it was a super detailed one and included many techniques that I have left behind today, such us painting with paint cans. It's also interesting to see how I achieved then, (when the polishing paintings were not common) the chrome-plated finishing. The exhaust muffler was airbrushing with the content of a Tamiya paint marker X11, and after several days coated with a very diluted thin layer of Tamiya's clear acrylic.

As it happened and it's common with many of my models, the painting scheme was "custom", however the paint job was realized being inspired in an orange Honda NSR500 of a private team, that I had seen in a magazine. As most of the civil vehicles any paint scheme is possible, so you could find a motorcycle like this close your house..
An interesting point to highlight, is the two transparent parts "cowling ", like the real one, a sample of the advanced technology that Tamiya had still then, many of the previous models had transparent cowls divided in two parts, but they were joined longitudinally.

Conclusion

Actually I believe that it's important to tell that, building old kits you can find a lot of fun and satisfaction. Today the new available materials, and more advanced decoration techniques, make that to build one of these "babies" turns in a challenged. The chances of adding super details to these kits are great, and there are a lot of available bibliography about those subjects. I can recommend "The Encyclopedia of the Motorcycle" by Peter Henshaw.

If you have built old Tamiya's motorcycles models, send your photos and we will include them in the corresponding review. The next one will be about the RZV500R/ 14037.