McLaren F1 Road Car

"Two hundred and forty-three mph. That’s the stat that grabbed everyone. Never before had a road-going car been capable of reaching such a staggering velocity – even if journalists couldn’t get the rev-limited road model past 221mph."

This is what a journalist said in December 2018 in a GQ article called "Why the McLaren F1 is the greatest supercar of all time". Yes, the Bugatti's, Koenigsegg's and SSC Ultimate Aero TT are faster, but not naturally aspirated engines.

This model if Fujimi's offering of the McLaren F1 road car, it comes as a kerbside model with only the upper surfaces of the engine showing. The general assembly of the car was very straight forward. I had no issues whilst building the model, apart from a couple of ejector pin marks which were visible in the outer door panels. The kit gives you the option of having the doors open or closed, I decided to do my F1 with one open and the other closed. This was because I was adding seatbelts to the interior of the model, Eduard pre-painted full harness to the drivers seat and standard cross-over belts to the passenger seats.

Once all of the main construction was done, it was painting time. My original plan was to spray the model in an Alclad Candy colour. So after the body was primed, it was given a coat of the silver base followed by the Indigo Blue Candy. This is where it all went wrong. First the ejector pin marks showed up on the doors, even though they were filled and sanded. Then some marks from the plastic itself became visible on a couple of the panels. The doors and these panels were stripped back, re-primed and painted. But I could not get the shades to match the rest of the body. That is when I decided to strip it all off and repaint the whole car. After the model sat on the shelf for a month or two, I changed my mind about the colour, not do the candy paint and got a tin of Tamiya Racing Green rattlecan out instead.

Once the model was finished and assembled, I sat at the bench looking at her thinking "Those wheel rims are just too bright for the body colour".So off came the wheels and the were resprayed Alclad Magnesium from what I remember. This made the wheels look a lot better and they looked just right on the model. The centre hubs were finished off with some metallic blue paint to throw some contrast against the rims. You will notice in the photos that the top of the open door is not stuck to the glass. This was because at the time the photos were taken, I did not a glue which was safe and strong enough to use with the clear plastic. This has been dealt with since and I used a UV activated glue on it which does not damage the clear plastic unlike solvent and cyanoacrylate based glues.