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Hasegawa 1/12 Repsol Honda RS250RW - "2007 WGP250" |
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Overview
The Honda Motor Company has been directly involved in motorcycle racing since the firms founding in the late 1940s. From a humble beginning at a small garage in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka prefecture, the company's first product to gain widespread sales success was a small, two-stroke motorcycle appropriately named the "Dream". Company founder Soichiro Honda always insisted on proving his products through the guise of competition and the RS250RW featured here is Honda's pinnacle in terms of two-stroke road racing motorcycles.
The kit represents a late 2007 season bike ridden by Repsol-Honda factory team riders Shuhei Aoyama and Julián Simón. Simón, #60, scored 123 points during 2007 and placed 9th overall in the 250cc World Grand Prix motorcycle racing Championship. Aoyama, #73, earned his first-ever pole position during the Motegi round in Japan and finished 12th. In 2007, the Repsol-Honda 250 team finished in 2nd just behind Ducati.
The Kit
This kit, which carries a skill level 3 rating, is derived from Hasegawa's recent 1/12 scale release of the Scot Racing Team 2009 Honda RS250RW (Hasegawa # BK1). To accurately model this version a number of parts have been newly tooled - these include the seat pads, rear swing arm, tank pad and rear fender pieces. All of the 145 parts are cleanly molded on three large sprues; two in grey and one in white. There is also a separately bagged white sprue with the nose and engine fairing + a small clear sprue with one windshield.
The box also contains a medium sized bag with separately bagged rubber tires, several lengths and diameters of black and clear vinyl tubing, metal machine screws, metal wire and a large metal coil spring for the rear suspension. No chrome or satin plated parts are included. As with other modern large scale motorcycle kits, the screws are used to hold the wheels on.
All of the parts have finely engraved detail, especially those for the engine, frame and radiator. Both halves of the frame also have realistically molded weld joints that should respond nicely to a dark wash to add depth and authenticity. The same applies to the intricate detail of the radiator moldings. While everything looks really good on the sprues, there are also a fair number of sink marks visible on some parts, but careful examination tells me that none of the areas they are located in will be visible on the completed model.
Decals and Instructions
The instructions provided are very detailed and intricate. While the illustrations given are very good, determining the placement and final location of some parts is confusing so extra care should be given to making yourself very familiar with them before using any adhesives. The painting instructions are very comprehensive with paint callouts given using the Mr. Color numbering system. If you do not use or cannot get these paints where you live, a good reference source to convert the Mr. Color callouts to those of other paint systems can be found here.
The decals, printed by Cartograph, are absolutely gorgeous and a tribute to both the printing and graphic artists "art" and the fluorescent red and orange shades here are some of the nicest I have ever seen in decal form. The decals are also quite thin and mine were in perfect registry, with no extra carrier film where it was not needed. The sheet also includes several carbon fiber decals for certain parts like the muffler wrappings. Given the colorful nature of the bikes scheme, it is easy to say that applying the decals is probably the most challenging aspect of building it.
Conclusion
In scanning over the instructions and parts with their precision and high level of detail, it is quite obvious a lot of care went into the design, engineering and packaging of this kit. Given the advanced level everything is at here, in my opinion, similar care is required to do it building justice. While definitely not aimed at a novice, this is a welcome effort from Hasegawa and is highly recommended, especially if you are also interested in modern road racing motorcycles.
Though it is my own first large scale GP bike, I look forward to taking that challenge on.
My sincere thanks go to Hasegawa USA for the review sample.
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