Background:

The Abu Dhabi Citroen DS3 would be in my personal top 10 rally car livery/car shape combos, even though it's not an especially well remembered one and lost in the long Sebastian period of the WRC. At the time I bought this Heller kit it was long out of production but eventually the 2012 Red Bull version cropped up on Ebay from a seller in France (appropriately for a French kit of a French car), auctioned along with the 2013 Abu Dhabi decals. Heller have since decided to reissue the kit, sans decals. Certainly for less than I paid. 3 sets of number and driver/co-driver decals are included but given the overall French-ness of the thing, it would be wrong to give it to anyone except Loeb, so number 1 it is.

Kit review:

Pros:

It's a good shape and for the most part fits together very well. The glass parts are very good: thin and shiny. The wheel arches and underbody entirely fit the upper body with none of the gaps you get on most models. The decals are also of good quality, necessary since there are so many and so many that are large. The rollcage is very comprehensive. For a Heller kit, it's a bonus that it steers and that it has door cards. Seats and door mirrors have good positive mountings.

Cons:

The kit lacks a lot of detail - in particular the underbody and suspension is very very simplified and anything related to engine or transmission is absent. The fit and assembly of the roll cage is poor though buildable with some hassle. There's some moulding cleanup to be done and some ugly ejector pin marks on the seats. The instructions are not very clear in parts and do have some errors in both painting and decal numbering. The wheels and tyres seem not wide enough to the real car, and the tyres are a little plasticky. The flappy box is kind of annoying. And then there's the decals.. which are good decals and go on well. But there are a lot of them and there's a lot of decal softener and patience invovled. Not Hellers fault but it's a con if you don't like that kind of thing.

Verdict:

It's a good starting point for either a simple or detailed build. Aside from the roll cage, it's great that it all fits together easily. However the complex decalling requires a lot of prior experience.

Build notes:

Built over the course of 6 weeks in December 2022-February 2023. A lot of extra detail has been added to this kit, most of which is in the interior and too numerous to list out entirely. Amongst other things (interior): Seatbelts, wiring, Air-con hose, extra boxes, cables, straps. Exterior: those small black domes on the roof, PE pins and aerials. Also the bonnet and grille meshes were opened up from the original kit (which took ages, it's thick plastic) and replaced with real mesh.

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