I dug it all back out recently, and rather than tackle the mechanical bits again, I decided to have a crack at the body first. I've had good luck with the bodywork in the recent 356 and Alfa Giulia kits, so I was feeling pretty good about this.
I picked green for the colour. There are too many red Ferraris, in my view; and there are lots of photos of Ferraris in other colours such as green. I'll paint the Fujimi kit of the GTO red when I get around to it. The interior is not right in the shot above; a nice pale leather colour is the goal. Tamiya Racing White is actually quite creamy and may be a better choice.
The paint is Tamiya British Green (TS-9). The drip rails and window surrounds are the Testor's pen that I described recently, and which I really like. Unlike Bare Metal Foil, it is a paint, and so you have to be careful, but with enamel going on top of lacquer, it is possible to remove excess enamel without damaging the underlying lacquer if you get right on it with the thinner.
The paint came out with a bit of orange peel, so I wet sanded using 2000 to 12,000 grit followed by polishing cream. It's better than it was but not perfect; however I was starting to take off the green in places, so I decided it was good enough. Next will be the only exterior decal, a Ferrari badge on the nose, then a few coats of clear.
What a classic shape! The subtle coke bottle profile, so much less blatant than a Corvette from the same period, the thin pillars giving it all a light airy feeling, the subtle lip on the trunklid and the shark-like eggcrate grille, the lack of fussy trim ... the GTO is much better known but is so much more aggressive looking.
The rest of the kit looks relatively simple, especially compared to the 908/03; there will be the usual trial fitting and cleanup of spun-cast metal to be dealt with. The biggest challenge will, in fact, be the classic egg carton grille: this will require fitting five horizontal photo-etched bars (E16 to E20) to a dozen vertical bars (E4 to E15 in the instruction sheet above), all inside the spun-cast grille surround (M64).
I made up a jig to line up the 5 horizontal bars so I can fit the vertical ones in. This involved cutting short slots in a piece of styrene rod using a jeweller's saw with a kerf of 0.008", slightly larger than the thickness of the photo-etched sheet at 0.006". Spacing is approximately the spacing on the vertical bars, about 0.060", which looks a bit big. I bent two of the long horizontal bars in trying to clamp it all in place, but not so badly that it won't all work, and the first two vertical bars are in and glued, all without anything pinging off into outer space. Yet. The potential for a screwup remains exceedingly high. While waiting for the glue to set on the first vertical bar, I had a look at the other two MFH 3-litre Ferrari kits in my stash, and discovered that the 250 GT SWB has exactly the same grille setup, which makes sense as the SWB and Lusso are essentially race and road versions of the same car; the 250 LM just has a piece of mesh.
Update: here is the result of a continuous 5 hours of work. Looks good from a distance... but it looks a lot better than a molded styrene grille.
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