1/24 Tamiya Ferrari Enzo
Models, Text, and Photos by Sam Grasso and Alexander Hague
(We normally don't feature road cars, but the Tamiya Enzo kit is a worthy exception - kjs)
I built this kit straight out of the box, the only additions were a few bent pieces of wire, some plumbing fittings, and almost four sheets of carbon fiber decals. I was amazed at how much of the decal material this model consumed. As for my impression of the kit, it is truly fabulous. I have been building plastic models for more than four decades, and I must say that the engineering of this particular model is remarkable.
The very fact that the doors hinge in very much the same manner as the prototype is amazing considering the size. We all know that when comparing scale model kits Tamiya is in a league of its own. and I have built many over the years, but this is my first small scale in a long time and found myself truly enjoying the act of assembling the components found in this kit.
The only part that I exchanged out was some very fine stainless steel screen in favor of the kit supplied woven material which appeared too large to me. The screen is used on the two large intakes in the nose area, the two intakes behind the doors which cool the radiators, and two little bits on the engine cover. In retrospect like much of this model those components are deep in the shadows of the body shape and surely the stock woven mesh would have easily sufficed. the small photo etched tree is a work of perfection, the tiny horses and FERRARI logos are perfect.
One thing that I found truly remarkable in this kit were the "glass" pieces. Not only was the fit so good on both the front windshield and the rear engine cover that one could almost drop them in place with no glue at all, almost a snap fit. But the truly remarkable part is the clarity of the pieces. It sounds like a small thing, but so clear and so distortion free are these two pieces that they truly add to the overall shape of the body, as they connect the shapes of the roof to the front hood, and continue the roofline back to the rear body work.
This was a pretty straightforward build, and the only little trick that I came up with was the texture on the heat shielding material surrounding the motor on both the firewall and a portion of the underside of the motor cover. I took a sheet of the bare metal aluminum, and cut it slightly larger than needed and laid it flat on a magazine ( I suppose Rosso or Cavallino would be perfect). I found a small knurled spacer on an old Exacto hammer which was approximately three-quarters of an inch in diameter with a threaded hole in the center. I found some rod stock and that was slightly smaller than the hole, placed the rod in the hole and carefully rolled my knurled spacer over the bare metal rolling pin style. Each pass produced a nice evenly textured row of depressions and protrusions, after that it was just a matter of picking up the rolling pin and at the far end and making another pass that just slightly overlapped the first until the piece was completely textured. I think it gave a very satisfactory representation of the real material.
- Sam Grasso
This Ferrari Enzo is the new 1/24 scale Tamiya kit. The paint is TS-8 from Tamiya with the black areas all TS-14 gloss black underneath Scale Motorsports decals, and TS-29 and TS-06 semi-gloss and matt black paints elsewhere. The doors work flawlessly.
I added machined aluminum shocks at the front and the back, courtesy of Scale Motorsports and F1 specialties detail sets for other cars.
- Alex Hague
I used Alclad Chrome on the rear of the exhausts and TS-30 from Tamiya with detail weathering by airbrush.
