Nissan Bluebird - Tour de Shikoku 1988

Martin Oostrom
You're doing a nice job, but I feel Hasegawa have been a bit lazy. I can't imagine that Nissan went racing with a standard dashboard including stereo and armrests on all 4 doors.

J4Juliet Author
Yeah that did cross my mind. It was quite difficult finding information on this car so I have no idea what the regulations were for the 1988 All Japan Rally Championship. But as you say it feel unlikely that they could remove the back seats but not remove the stereo and door trims.

Martin Oostrom
You've got to work with what you have

J4Juliet Author
Indeed. Even if I did know it was wrong I probably wouldn't modify the kit as this is supposed to be my easy build in between the FrankenVolvo!

Andrei
Nice! Good model!

Dan Tokarczyk
Nice Bluebird, I'm currently working on the same model, but in all blue colour. Back in the 90's they did use road cars that were prepped for rally, so a lot of cars had "civilian" trim and dash.

J4Juliet Author
Thanks Dan, I've been keeping an eye on your build. I didn't really know anything about this particular car I just thought it looked cool, glad you could provide some more insight into what was going on with the trim.

Bozzer
Nice work, J4. Those decals really make it POP!
Back in the day, a buddy of mine had a Datsun 180B. That eventually became the Nissan Bluebird. Man, that car had some balls. We thrashed it everywhere, but the British weather wasn't kind to its bodywork and chassis. The engine however, just kept going! That was the car that gave me my first experience into drifting, before drifting was a thing 😉 Man, the 1980's were so cool! Eventually it led to 6 penalty points on my license, after getting stopped for speeding, by a cop in a Mini Metro, of all things! He caught up to me, after I stopped to park up. PC 7615 was highly impressed with my driving skills, for a young lad. He even smiled and joked, as he booked me 🙂

J4Juliet Author
Bozzer it feels like every car I build a model of you driven it 😄 I'm gradually getting your fully driving history.

Bozzer
The 80's were a special time of my life. Birds, bikes and beer! Most of the stuff I got upto, you'd never get away with now. Probably for good reason too, but they were excellent times. I calmed down when my son's were born, but then in the middle 90's, I had a kinda relapse and went back to my old self. That's when I got into my MKIII escort era. Things went a bit crazy then 😉

J4Juliet Author
Ha, I can imagine. I'll have to find a MkIII escort rally car to build and get the full story 😛

Bozzer
AMT and Revell do MkIII kits. They'd both need drastic modification though.

Bozzer
That's the best I could find, so far. Obviously, it's not a rally car, but there's potential 😉

Bozzer
cults3d.com/en/3d-mo..-escort-mk3-breitbau

Now that might work! 😉

J4Juliet Author
There are a bunch of cars I'd love to build models of but no one currently makes a kit of them I keep hoping by the time I've built all the kits in my stash someone will have released a kit of them. However at some point in the future I may feel brave enough to try 3D printing.

Bozzer
Shoot me a list over, buddy and I'll see what I can come up with?

J4Juliet Author
Thanks for the offer but I'm trying to keep my stash size under control. Once that is running low I'll start more seriously investigating some of these options. They broadly fall into 4 categories:

1. Kits that haven't been release and I need to just be patient e.g. Ford RS200 Group B (Belkits BEL-022, 1:24)

2. Kits that are no longer produced that I can just hope show up on ebay e.g. Skoda Octavia WRC 2002/2003 (REJI Model 2411, 1:24)

3. Cars that would need significant modification from the closest kit. Maybe I can build up to this depending up how the Volvo project goes e.g. ewrc-results.com/image/938482/?entry=4224271

4. Cars where I'd have to build them from scratch, maybe somewhere down the line I'd feel up to tackling e.g. ewrc-results.com/image/103205/?entry=5542