Tamiya's 1/24
Original-Teile
Mercedes CLK-GTR

By Norm Cabana

Introduction

In international motor racing it is common for private teams to be formed to race the factory cars from the previous year. Team Persson and Zakspeed Racing are two such teams. In the race you could easily tell which cars belonged to Team Persson. They were the ones with the audacious paint scheme! Imagine taking a car and wrapping it in blueprint paper, then ripping open the paper to expose the engine and rear suspension. The effect is really quite striking. The sponsors on the car are not the usual ones. Bridgestone and Mobil One I know, but I must admit that I had no idea who the main sponsor was. Original-Teile? Who are they? I have since discovered that Original-Teile is one of the major parts suppliers to Mercedes-Benz and Warsteiner is a beer company.

The car itself is the 1997 Mercedes AMG prototype entry. This car went from the drawing board to the racetrack in a mere 128 days and was immediately competitive with the rest of the factory teams. In its first year of competition the Mercedes CLK-GTR scored 6 victories in 11 races and won the championship in is first year. The engine is a 60-degree V-12, displacing 6 liters and produces more than 600 hp. A 6 speed sequential transaxle transmits this power to four huge Bridgestone racing tires. The suspension is double wishbone, front and rear, and they use pull rods to actuate the coil-over dampers. The hallmark of Mercedes is the reliability of their cars and this one is no exception. It is also a heck of a nice looking car!

The Kit

Just as Mercedes-Benz has built a reputation for quality and reliability, so too has Tamiya. If this kit is any example, that reputation is well earned indeed. Although a Tamiya kit typically costs more than other kits of the same subject, the quality and engineering of their product more than makes up for the price difference. Reducing the number of hours I have to spend fixing "mistakes" is worth quite a bit to me. Sanding filler is NOT the high point of my life!

The trees appear to be well laid out and every part looks like it can be removed from the sprue without problems. Tamiya has put the extra box space to good use. They have not crammed as many parts as possible onto a tree, but have instead left us room to use cutters to take the parts off. It is not a big thing, but it is a nice touch. This is just one example of the engineering and attention to detail that sets this kit apart. Are you listening, Revell?

This kit has a 10 page, four language instruction sheet that is very well laid out and is very easy to understand, although little actual writing is used. Tamiya uses Tamiya paint codes and shading to indicate areas to be painted. This is an intelligent way to do things even if their paint codes are a little confusing. Speaking of paint, the color recommended for the body is Tamiya MS-4 that I have been told is difficult to find in the United States. Model Car World makes a lacquer color for this car, item #2099 but I find this color to have a little too much red in it. I will be painting this model with MCW paint item #2072, which to my eyes is a dead on match for the color. Other paints that have been reported to be similar to the color of the original car are Ford paint code XSC2639 and PPG paint code DDL190395K, which is called Linaritblau Mica. I suspect that the car paint codes I have shown are European paint codes.

There is also an instruction sheet for the painting of the car and for the placement of the numerous decals. While a decal instruction sheet is somewhat unusual I am glad they included one. This is a very complicated decal scheme! The decal instructions use 5 drawing views of the car to help you place the decals.

There are two decal sheets included with this kit. The larger of the decal sheets contains all of the white markings as well as the car number background and the Warsteiner and Bridgestone decals. The smaller decal sheet has all of the "torn bag decals," car numbers, seat belts, and various other small decals. I can see a potential problem with the white marking in that they have grouped a large number of markings into one decal and there is a lot of clear film used. This can lead to silvering if the paint surface of the car isn’t super smooth. All the decals appear to be slightly thick and I would expect to end up using a setting solution on them. Regardless, the decals are excellently done.

There is one other set of decals that I need to mention, although they're not shown, and these are the tire decals. Tamiya has taken what I think is a smart approach to the problem of putting decals on tires. They have made these decals so that one side is sticky and you peel a backing paper off, cut out the decal, apply the sticky side to the tire and then wet the decal paper and take the paper off and leave the decal stuck to the tire. I have not tried it yet, but it sounds interesting.

The tires do not feel like the standard vinyl tires seen in most kits but instead remind me a lot of the silicone tires I used to use on my slot cars back in the late 60s. The material has a nice feel to it and there is no surface shine to be removed. If anything, these tires look like a set of real scuffed tires. There is just a hint of a parting line.

The upper body is made up of two pieces of plastic on one tree. Other than some very minor sink marks on the rear spoiler, the outer surface of the upper body will need little clean up. Looking at the inside of the body it is apparent that a lot of thought went into the engineering of these pieces. There are quite a few ejector pin marks but they are placed either in locations that can easily be filled and sanded or on pads where the mark can be sanded off. All these "mistakes" can be removed without damaging the detail of the parts.

The rest of the parts are divided up into five other trees, molded in blue, black, chrome, and clear. All the parts are crisply molded with absolutely no sign of flash anywhere. The black parts for the most part reflect those that were either painted semi-gloss black or made from carbon fibre. The blue parts make up the engine, rear

bodywork, air ducts, radiators, and other pieces. These are all very well molded and you could literally cut these from the tree, paint them and install them without doing any cleanup at all. The wheels are where I have my one major complaint with the kit. They should have received a satin chrome treatment, but are molded in blue plastic instead. The only way to make them look good is to spray them with either Testors Aluminum Buffing Metalizer or use SnJ Aluminum and buff them out.

The chrome tree is well done and quite brilliant, and provides the parts for the headlight bezels, the mirror inserts, and the grille. The last tree in the kit is the clear parts. I am surprised that Tamiya did not include any red plastic items. All the window surfaces are relatively thin and well detailed. At first glance there doesn’t appear to be anything special about these parts, but a close examination reveals fine rivet detail in the side windows. The clear parts are packaged in a separate plastic bag, preventing its getting scratched.

There are three more items in the kit that deserve mention. The first is a little metal tri-star hood ornament. Gorgeous, but how are we supposed to keep this thing from getting damaged? I’ll wager that this will be the first part that will be lost in the carpet. The second item is a very fine mesh screen used to model the trash screen on the radiator inlet. There is a full size template in the kit instructions to aid you in cutting the screen. Finally, Tamiya has chosen to provide a set of masks to be used when painting the black trim on the window.

Conclusion

This is a kit that I would recommend very highly to almost anyone. The quality of the kit almost guarantees success. The only item I wish this kit had is a full set of detail photos showing all of the components, the location, and their colors. I will grant you that it would increase the price, but this one would be worth it.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank HobbyLink Japan for providing this kit for evaluation and I would like to thank Paul Cabana for providing the background photos.