Jordan 197 Revell-Germany No. 07212 Molded in Yellow and Clear. Some engine detail included.

Building the Jordan 197

There is very minimal interior engine detail, and it's rather out of scale. The whole
engine/rear suspension is built out-of-car and then installed into the underpan in one piece. It really doesn't matter about the engine detail, as the bodice is glued directly to the underpan, so any engine detail would be hidden. For this reason, I built a curbside. I just painted the whole structure black.

There seems to be a good/bad theme here, good-engine has no good detail, but even if it did, bad-it'd be covered anyway ;-) The seat and instrument panel go into the bottom body piece, which has a tub that it all fits into. I painted the seat flat black, added some glosscote to the panel and covered that with the panel decal. I painted the sidewalls and added the respective decals, and glued the assembly into the tub. I also added the front wing risers as well.

Second good/bad-The body goes together top to bottom, and you have to install the upper front A-arm, and it stays there throughout the whole construction process. The seam line on the nose section is really the only fillng you have to do, and it takes a little work, but it came out OK, and I was happy that I never broke the suspension arm once! It's quite sturdy (good/bad), but this robustness makes it out of scale.

All the suspension members are just a bit too robust and kind of stand out, but the front A-arm makes a good handle for painting and such. Not a big deal, but it follows the good/bad thing doesn't it??!!??

I now had the underpan with the engine assembly and the body with the seat assembly. Oh, did I mention that the whole body except for the nose under section/cockpit tub is one peace??!!?? The mold is really good though, and reproduces the lines quite well. That's basically it for the major components. All that's left are the tires, front suspension, and the wings and upper air scoop.

The scoop is in 2 pieces, I glued them and just sanded the seam. An I pondered keeping it off since it's all red. But I decided against it and glued it to the top of the body since it forms a "natural" join line. The wings go on together easily, but again, are to robust, need to be thinner. I hand brushed the wheels gloss black, and added the O.Z. decals, and the tires themselves I kept clean because the decal sheet has some stickers and so I left the tires alone and just added the stickers as well as the Goodyears. Bad thig was, the rubber compund must have some kind of natural solvent that sofyened the Goodyear decals and made them stick to whatever they touched, hence I have missing "Eagle"
and "Goodyear" on some of the tires, weird!(No "good" thing here) I added the rear wing to the body as per the instructions, and that was pretty much it.

It was easy to paint the car since the upper part is all yellow while the lower part is all black, so I just stuffed kleenex in the cockpit area, masked the A-arms, and painted the body with Gunze Yellow. The color is the standard FS Yellow, but it was perfect, the pic I sent almost captures the saturation, but not quite, it a little more rich than you see there.

After a week of dry time, I started decaling. This is the kits strongest point here- The decals are gorgeous! Everything was well represented, and on register. Except for that Goodyear thing, the decals were no problem. I left off what wasn't needed, and added the Benson & Hedges decals from F1 Specialties sheet J97. I used pictures of the Argentine Grand Prix for reference that I got off the internet, and matched the markings with that, since the sheet was geared towards that GP anyway.

They looked great, so I didn't add an overcoat of clear, just left them as is, and they did just fine, as you can see from the picture. I hand painted the upper scoop with Testors Italian Red, and
added the black line decal after it had dried.

Top was glued to bottom and the front suspension was added. It was a little tricky gettin the shock rods to go in, but I finally got them installed. The painted and decalled front wing was glued in place with CA, as was all the other suspension members. Mirrors were added, and the tires were glued in place with CA, since the were quite loose otherwise.

I put some camber in the tires as well, more on the front of course. Last but not least were the antennas out of stretched black sprue, and literally topped off with the camera pod.
 

Basically, I was a bit disappointed, but satisfied with this kit. It doesn't have a lot of detail, but builds up to be a nice little curbside. I mean little: I can see why 1/20 is better scale for F1 cars, but if they can do it in 1/43, then I guess 1/24 is OK. The decals are the high point of the whole kit, and as you can see all it needed to be perfect were the B&H decals from F1 Specialties. The detail is lacking, but as I said not a big deal except that the molded in seat harness could use some refinement. The overall shape is very well reproduced. If only those suspension members were thinner! An 8.5 out 10.

If you're as much a fan of Jordan Grand Prix as I am it's a must have! And quite a bargain
considering the Club M and Modeler's('99) resin kits are a bit pricey.