Hasegawa Toyota 2000GT 1/24. Photographs.

Hasegawa Toyota 2000GT 1/24 completed April 25th, 2020

Background:

It took me a long long time to appreciate the shape and style of this car - once I did, I bought the kit. I still think the headlight arrangement is not especially pretty. Two other things that put me off were it's original ugly and narrow wheels tucked away under the car, and I don't think it looks great in white. Both remedied in my build.

Pros:

Nice shape, good moulding with little cleanup required. Although there are not many parts it has all the parts it needs to represent the car. The chrome parts are good and save a lot of painting of the brightwork. The glass is ultra-clear and sticks in place with no fuss.

Cons:

No engine - although there is a rare engine version available and you can see from some of the design of the front end, this version would assemble a bit more securely. The seperate piece of bodywork that goes underneath the headlights has no mounting points save for some solid looking holes for the engine version. On the regular non-engine version it just "goes up against" the part above. Since that part is mosly chromed, it makes an even less secure mount. With the interior the assembly of the door panels to the dashboard and interior floor is lousy and had to be reinforced with a lot of tape. I would have liked some more secure mounting method for the wing mirrors too. The wood decals for the interior are good looking but hard to apply. There are no Japanese plates in the decal set, only "2000GT" ones.

Verdict:

The end result is good, but the design of the front and interior make it harder work than it ought to have been. Don't make this your first build if you're getting into the hobby.

Build notes:

Completed over the space of about 3 or 4 weeks in April 2020. The wheels are Aoshima BBS RSII 17 inch and with tyres are the same overall diameter as the original wheels, just a lot wider. The wheels had to be ground down inside to not stick out of the arches, and converted to Tamiya-style male fit for the female Hasegawa hubs. The paint is Tamiya TS-92 Metallic Orange from a rattle-can with Tamiya TS-13 Clear over the top. The number plate decals are sourced from another kit, everything else is entirely buit out-of-the-box.