Tamiya Porsche 911 GT2 Road Version (993)

My first 1/24 Porsche! But to confess: air-cooled 911s go right over my head – I know next to nothing about them, other than that cutting up some some of these classic machines to slap cigarette and coke-fueled fiberglass widebodies on them can be wildly offensive.

This kit was a Christmas gift this last year from a friend – who noted that I hadn’t built a Porsche yet and thought it would be a good pace-changing project to take a crack at during the new year – he was right.

After doing a little reading into the history of the GT2 and the 993 911, it seems like this is supposed to be a very special Porsche GT car – one of the first homologated for GT and Le Mans endurance racing.

Bolt-on widebody flares, a full roll cage, and BBS wheels out of the box. Very racecar stuff.

It’s a Tamiya kit, so we can expect parts quality, complexity, fit and finish to be pretty top tier.

Some minor mold lines on the main body at the front and rear bumper sections that will be sanded smooth before paint.

Interestingly, this kit is marketed as the “street” version of the GT2 – and it seems Tamiya has released a “race” version of the car as well, since the instruction manual actually tells you to sand off the hood pins and various other body protrusions on the plastic shell for the “street” car. Ironic that they’re literally telling you to erase detail on the body.

Something I found interesting was that there was no mention of filling or sanding this oval shaped indent in the hood, which clearly is a racecar-only feature on the GT2. Not sure if it’s a fuel door latch for perhaps a front fuel cell? Either way I planned to do the front bonnet in carbon fiber so the smoother the surface the better for my purposes – which is why it was filled with Bondo body filler and sanded smooth.

Basic layout of the body parts – we get a separate front lip, side skirts, and engine lid with integrated GT2 wing.

Tamiya does actually include extra wing parts to make the higher racecar rear wing deck, but I do like the classic look of the street wing, so we’ll be keeping it like this.

A lot of the GT Racing spec parts are included in this kit, including a completely separate steering wheel and shifter. I have a feeling you could build the entire racing version of the GT2 with this “street” version kit, though I don’t know the car well enough to know what that spec really means.

Call me disrespectful, but I don’t know my 993’s well enough to care about keeping everything to exact road car spec. I’m using the racing steering wheel because it looks cooler, but pairing it with the road car shifter, sue me.

The rear subframe assembly is actually mildly complex, with the transmission, axles, anti-roll bar, and control arms all there.

This is the first I’ve seen Tamiya give you a little square of reflective aluminum foil – apparently it’s meant to go behind the front indicator lights to give it reflective properties. I’d normally just fill the backs in with chrome paint, but this is a nice touch.

They also include full harness sets for both seats – as decals! I think it’s a nice effort, but if I’m going to be adding harnesses to my interior I’d be doing it with actual harness kits, not just water-slide decals.

Since I don’t really have an affinity for these cars, I asked the friend who gifted me this kit what color he’d like to see it in – behold, Porsche Rubystone Red.

When I was first looking up samples of the color I thought it was just a darkish magenta/pink, but upon actually getting the proper pigment color it really is something unique. I didn’t think I’d like it at first, but seeing the pigment actually on the body has me very glad I went with their pick.

As we know, I’m a caveman who refuses to transition to airbrushing, so I’m limited in the colors I use by whatever spray aerosols are available. Somehow I got incredibly lucky and managed to find what appears to be the last can of Testors Model Master Rubystone Red Enamel paint on eBay – the moment I pressed the trigger you could tell this paint is ancient. It doesn’t seem like Model Master makes enamels like this anymore, so I might’ve just used up the last can of this stuff ever on this build.

The main body frame has the flat-six engine block molded into the rear. With everything else painted up, we’re ready for assembly.

The only slight modifications I’m making here are cutting and tossing the original exhaust tips – which were very small OEM pipes. Replacing them with some more modern metal fart cans.

Undercarriage done. Not much going on at the front – it’s a 911 after all so it’s all party in the back.

While looking into Rubystone Red Porsches I came across photos of a 964 911 with these multi-colored purple/pink seat inserts – I thought the look was very unique and paired well with the Rubystone Red body color. I’d really never get a chance to do seat colors like this on anything else, so I figured it would be a cool look to replicate.

Very cool of Tamiya to include a fully built roll cage that fits and integrates perfectly with the interior assembly and body. The cage is painted pearl white, but it may be tell that it’s anything but white especially once the body shell goes over.

The stock BBS wheels that came with the kit are cool (and very wide, apparently 11″ wide for the rears to fill in those giant arches) – but I’ve been looking for a build to use these SevenK Nikas on for a while, and I’m absolutely adoring this aesthetic with the Rubystone.

It’s okay to stance and ruin a timeless racecar like this because it’s in 1/24 scale, right? Right?!

So, I originally wanted to step my game up with the widebody rivets since I’ve never really bothered highlighting the hardware before in any of my previous builds. Started off here by drilling out the existing bolt sections on the body, with the intention of adding my own 1/24 scale rivet hardware.

Sadly, no hobby store locally stocked 1/24 rivets, or really anything that could even come close as a substitute. If I wanted true rivets I would’ve had to order them from overseas, and I really didn’t want to pause this build for a month to wait for detail parts to arrive. So – I saw these absolutely microscopic machine screws at the hobby store and thought – heck, worth a shot to see how they look, right?

Sike. That’s atrocious. Way too big.

I really thought maybe I could get away with it by inserting them backwards so the tip of the screws at the bottom where they’re threaded could act as the rivet head, but even trying it like that it just looked too goofy and out of scale. We’ll get ’em next time.

Carbon hood, taking after the style of some more modern GT Porsches.

To be honest I really didn’t care much for the 993 body style going into this build – but the finished look has definitely made me a fan, especially in such a unique body color.

She’s very stancey – but that was always the point. Very happy with the matte gold SevenK wheels.

The fact that the Rubystone Red was an enamel paint really threw me for a loop on this build – since almost everything I work with is lacquer. I hate enamels since they take forever to dry and cure properly – Testors says not to recoat their enamels until 48 hours after the first coat (or within the first 3 hours). I can usually sand and polish Tamiya lacquers within an hour if the piece is left to dry in a warm environment.

Enamel paints also go on extremely thick – and are known to dry harder and more durable than lacquers. Because the color coat went on so thick on its own, I decided to forego a clear gloss finishing coat entirely on this kit – a first for me since I like to wetsand and polish clear coats to bring out shine. With this Rubystone Red it was just straight cut and buff on the color coat, though I think the enamel is glossy enough on its own to show a decent amount of gloss depth.

Those black nubs on the base of the windshield and that little black nub on the roof are technically only meant for the racecar version of the 993 GT2 – I just forgot to sand them off when I was prepping the body.