Background:

I was very happy when I learned Tamiya were going to release this kit, as the only alternative at the time was a Revell snap-fit one. The 2017 Ford GT is one of my favourite American cars.

Pros:

Usual Tamiya high quality. Mostly perfect fitment, great moulding and detail. Has half an engine. Thoughtfully engineered kit makes painting of a lot of parts easy - if it's a different colour in real life, they moulded it as a separate part. Good quality decals, nice semi-shiny alloy finish and tyres with no mould line to remove. Lights and glass parts have large extra tabs to air glueing and perfect placement, in fact a lot of parts have been moulded to aid perfect fitment, with little tabs, lines etc. Body is moulded in white, which I wish more kits were. Headlights in particular are a standout item for detail.

Cons:

Assembly of the body panels does cause glue to spurt out of some gaps, necessitating a cleanup. Some of the body joint tabs are small, some optimising on the part of the designer there. Once the body is fited to the chassis, I had a gap around the middle where the doors meet the sills. A lot of messing about semi-corrected this but it's not perfect. I can't see anything I've done or added in the build to cause this. Some of the vents that'd have mesh in real life have a transparent part and a mesh-decal, which is odd and I used real mesh. The larger meshed areas are solid plastic, though something more detailed would have been nice OOB - especially on the side vents where you could see through to radiators in real life. Some of the build is a bit fiddly. The engine is more a "top of engine". It would have been nice to see Tamiya go to town on this art.

Verdict:

A very nice kit from Tamiya. A little fiddly so not for beginners. It will produce a very good result.

Build notes:

Aside from a few bits of mesh and carbon fibre decals on the sills, it's built OOB. As often with Tamiya the thing is so perfect there's not a lot of scope for adding more. Not easily visible on the photos but easily visible to me are some blemishes on the paint cause by gluey fingers whilst trying to get the body to sit correctly onto the chassis. It's not a flawless build which is a little annoying. It's the kind of kit I'd love to build twice to take the benefit of that experience and do it better the next time.

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