TAMIYA MAZDA 787B 1991 LE MANS RACER

MAT IRVINE REPORTS
It’s been a while - like 22 years - but Tamiya has now taken a 1:24 scale kit of a sports racing car it issued in 1991, reissuing it as a different car from the same race.


The event was the Le Mans 24-hour race in France, and the winning car was Mazda 787B number 55. This new kit, however, is the car that took sixth place - the company-sponsored number 18. The 787B is an interesting vehicle, as it was powered by Mazda’s rotary engine, and was the first Le Mans success for a Japanese manufacturer.  

Antennas
The 94-plus parts of this Tamiya Mazda 787B are moulded in white, black, and clear, with the usual set of soft vinyl tyres, and a selection of nylon bushes to attach the wheels. You also get a length of stainless-steel rod to represent the two roof antennas. When assembled, the model measures 180mm (7in) long.

Curbside kit?
Fortunately, Tamiya has chosen to make this model a fully detailed kit, not a curbside (the usual term for a kit without any engine detail, so forever destined to sit ‘by the curb’), so you get a highly detailed 4-rotor rotary engine. However, to anyone used to a conventional reciprocating engine, whether in ‘straight’ or ‘V’ arrangement, the engine looks a rather strange object, as it is long, thin, and almost square in cross-section. Pleasingly, the rear bodywork (or 'cowl' in Tamiyaspeak) lifts off for display purposes.

Silky smooth
In a possibly unique kit instruction, you are told to remove the cross-hatched lines on the bodywork with 1000-grade superfine sanding paper. They are there because the first issue, the winning Renown car, had a complex paint scheme involving green and fluorescent orange, the faint lines being added to the kit’s bodywork to aid painting and decal application.

However, the lines are very faint indeed, and frankly it’s unlikely they would be noticed if you omit this stage. Otherwise, the kit is conventional in assembly.

Three-strong race team
Incidentally, Mazda had three cars in the 1991 race. As well as numbers 18 and 55, there was number 56, a car initially entered in the previous year’s race, and this time it finished in eighth place. So far, Tamiya hasn’t produced this version, but you never know.

Review kit courtesy The Hobby Company.

Mazda and other Tamiya kits available here.

The usual Tamiya attention to detail extends to the box sides.

PRECISION 1:8 SCALE HASEGAWA ROTARY ENGINE

SMN report:

Hasegawa has reissued the beautifully produced 1:8 scale scale Le Rhone rotary engine. There are just 82 components to assemble, but it's an impressive kit nonetheless. As you can see from the pictures, the result will be a extremely convincing replica of this important World War I powerplant, and Hasegawa includes a dolly stand, so the display possibilities are good too.

Widely used aircraft engine

The Le Rhone was designed and built by the French company Gnome et Rhone in 1916, and before long hundreds of these engines were installed in dozens of aircraft types from several countries. These even included Germany, whose engineers cloned the design from a crashed Allied fighter and by August 1917, this was being used in the Fokker Triplane, soon to become infamous as the mount for Manfred von Richthofen, the famed ‘Red Baron’. In German service the engine was called the Oberursel Ur II, but it was the Le Rhone in all but name, and is actually the engine that Hasegawa has chosen to model.

Dynamic duo

So a neat display pair could be the 1:8 Le Rhone, displayed next to a parked Fokker Triplane. Many Triplanes are available, so the choice is up to you, though it’s perhaps a pity that the French publisher Hachette hasn’t reissued its Triplane partwork of a while back; this monster kit was actually to the same 1:8 scale as the Hasegawa engine.

Clerget engine

Hasegawa also makes a 1:8 scale Clerget, another French rotary engine used widely in World War I, in aircraft such as the British Sopwith Camel (above). So here’s an opportunity for a matching pair of opposed fighters, both powered by and displayed with French-designed engines, something an irony probably not lost on combatants in the deadly air battles of the time.  

SMN partwork article, including the Hachette Fokker Triplane here.

Assorted Fokker Triplane kits here.

Assorted Sopwith Camel kits here.

Hasegawa Clerget engine, as used on the Sopwith Camel, here.

Other interesting engine kits here.

Airfix blister pack vintage display.