My first Hasegawa kit! Well, kind of…I’ve actually had experience with the brand before, but not with any of their automotive kits. I actually hadn’t planned to build an R32 again so soon, but this one just happened to land in my lap as a gift from a friend who bought it in Japan.
Going in I really didn’t know what to expect out of Hasegawa compared to Tamiya or Aoshima kits – I also normally wouldn’t buy a racecar spec kit, since I generally prefer street cars, but this is actually a race winner replica car kit.
I was a little disappointed that the HKS livery is cut specifically to the panels of the race car instead of them giving you a big HKS oil slick pattern sheet – but I suppose in hindsight this makes the most sense for building the car as it’s supposed to look out of the box – I’m the sicko who needs to ruin and customize everything he touches.
Also – the entire instruction manual is English translated! This sort of stuff still amazes me, especially for brands and kits that aren’t popular outside of Japan.
So right out of the box, uh, holy parts count Batman – this is more parts than I’m used to, even out of full-motor Tamiya kits, and I’m not even including the clear runners here. This model doesn’t even have an engine – all these parts are for the racecar interior and undercarriage.
Main body shell comes with the hood and trunk as separate pieces, but the bumpers are molded in.
The trunk has these peculiar holes right up top, that aren’t mounting points for a wing or anything – the instructions show clear pieces that are supposed to go underneath, and the trunk livery has cutouts for these holes so they’re obviously meant to be a part of the race car..fuel filler holes for a fuel cell in the trunk maybe?
Regardless, I’m filling the holes in out of my own ignorance – some pla-plate cut and glued in with some putty to smooth out the top will do just the trick.
Of course I can’t just leave the stock body alone – I’ve actually always planned on building a Pandem R32, I just didn’t plan to do it with an HKS factory race car as the base model – but hey, we improvise, adapt, overcome.
This body kit is designed by BlackboxSTL and printed by TX 3D Customs – it’s actually meant for the Tamiya R32 model, but heck, it’ll work here with the Hasegawa body with some light massaging.
The fitment uh, isn’t fantastic. I’m sure that’s probably because I’m forcing a bodykit meant for a Tamiya model onto a Hasegawa mold, though I really wouldn’t be able to tell you how different the bodies really are. The important parts line up – the front fender surrounds frame the headlights correctly, and the fender arches are the correct shape, they just don’t lay flat on the body very well and it feels like the rear quarters are a few mm too short to cover the entire rear panels.
The rear lip bit that come off the rear quarter fenders are especially bad, since it seemed like the whole thing was just too short to wrap around the bumper the way it’s supposed to, but I figured out it’s just a matter of “flattening” the widebody panels so they hug the body more.
This was eventually achieved with some careful heat gun magics – I heat the resin widebody panels just enough to make them malleable (not enough to melt or warp them, there’s a very fine line to tread here), then put them up against the body and massage them in place. Eventually they form up enough to lay flat against the body and wrap around the rear bumper, but as you can see the rear quarters are still a tad too short to reach and connect with the skirt extensions that are part of the front fender.
Thankfully I’m no stranger to bodywork. Some Bondo body filler and we have our skirts connected! I prefer using two-part Bondo mix since you can control the cure time based on how much hardener you add, and it doesn’t shrink as it dries like many one-part putties.
Cutting the stock fenders down with a heat knife after the widebody panels have been finalized. This is actually a requirement as the stock fenders stick out quite a bit below the widebody fenders.
And finally, drilling the widebody hardware holes out with my smallest drillbit to prepare them for actual hardware after painting.
Primer check!
I’m ironically not really following the instruction manual for color coding on this one – it calls for most of the undercarriage to be painted white, with some matte black bits. I imagine that’s a race car specific thing, so I decided to just paint it based on undercarriage photos of R32s I dug up on Google.
I usually don’t try this hard on undercarriage details (sometimes I’ll be lazy and just paint an entire subframe matte black without filling in any control arm details or whatever since you’ll never see it anyway) but I decided to go maximum effort on the parts here since it came with all this detail anyway. Those goldish bronze parts are brake cooling ducts!
I’ve always wanted to do a purple Skyline, but I also thought traditional Midnight Purple is just too dark for my tastes – I should know, since I owned an actual Midnight Purple III car before, and while the color would be stunning under the right light, in most cases it just looked black.
This color is actually from Testors – they call it Purple Licious, and it’s actually quite stunning in person – a very vibrant metallic purple with almost hints of cerulean blue in its flakes.
Moving onto interior – I thought it was fascinating how Hasegawa actively asks builders to fill certain parts in or drill holes and scrape certain details off. In this case, they just straight up tell you to fill in the center dash vents on your own, presumably with putty or whatever technique of your choice, since race cars don’t need no silly air conditioning
I, uh, may have gotten lazy and decided to just not fill those center vents in and leave them lol. But, I’m definitely going to make use of the very cool Powered by HKS dash decal, since I like the aesthetic. Step one for applying something like that seamlessly is to paint the piece gloss – in this case gloss black, since the dash will be matte black by the end of the process. I apply the decals on the initial gloss coat, which helps the clear edges “sink” into the gloss coat and prevent decal edge silvering.
Final matte coat applied after the decals over the initial gloss coat. You can barely tell the edges of the POWERED BY HKS lettering are there!
Filling in a few more interior details by hand with brushes
I do like that this kit comes with a full cage out of the box, but assembling this thing was like putting together a toothpick tent – the holes are less pegs and more just guide holes (as are with most connections for car models, but this is especially bad when everything’s so thin and fragile)
I find it hilarious that Hasegawa has tell you to drill your own guide holes out of the chassis plate for the roll cage mounting points. Some of these holes were already pre-drilled in the chassis, you couldn’t just do the rest for us here too?! I imagine the reasoning behind this is because they use the base R32 interior tub mold for multiple versions of the car, so instead of retooling their mold assembly for this race car version they just tell you to drill it out yourself.
They also tell you to delete the rear brake light mound on the rear parcel shelf and the climate vents, which I just sanded into oblivion. I figure this stripped interior tub plate would be bespoke to this race car model, so why would they leave the third brake light mound and climate vents on this mold in the first place? Surely the street car interior tub isn’t stripped and actually has rear seats molded in?
Interior parts all ready. I have no clue what those little silver rectangles are, but I painted them according to the manual and in they shall go. The silver tank with the red label I think is a fire suppression system, and the silver cylinders with blue collars are internal parts of an air jack system! Racecar AF.
Yes, the model also only comes with one seat.
I’m really enjoying the white roll cage contrasted against the bright red seat and purple tub. I also think I installed the fire suppression system backwards, oops.
Masking stickers included for all the windows!
I usually just paint window trim and weather stripping in by hand, but I decided to give it a go with masking instead this time. Turned out much cleaner, I should be doing this way more often.
A few more miscellaneous parts – those exhaust pipes are actually side exit pipes! The four little cylinders at the bottom are air jacks! Such novel racecar things fascinate me.
Going with a bit of an unusual wheel choice – mostly because I’ve had these 5-DOT Rotiform DIAs laying around in my parts bin forever and I’ve been trying to find a car to fit them on that doesn’t look weird. I decided to paint the faces a deep gold and gave it a shot here.
Dry fit. I think it works! I was worried the gold and purple would be too Lakers-y (a trap I think a lot of purple cars fall into when they use yellow as a secondary color), but I think the white roll cage and red seat break it up and offset it nicely.
Painting in each wheel hardware piece in by hand with Molotow Chrome
Maximum effort painting these brakes when you’ll hardly see any of it once they’re hidden behind those telephone dial wheels.
1mm rivets for the widebody from Hobby Design. Each one has to be individually placed in the little holes I drilled out prior to painting the body – I actually ran out of rivets near the end and had to order more – there are over 45 that need to be placed on this widebody!
So, race cars aren’t really mean to be slammed dirt nasty low, and this model in particular has a lot going on in the undercarriage, as we’ve seen – from the side exit exhausts taking space to the brake cooling inlet ducts to the air jacks and all that jazz. Unfortunately, with all that stuff sticking out of the underside, it became very difficult to lower this thing enough to where I wanted it.
I’m not even talking about slamming it with the wheel lips rubbing up on the fender edges – I mean just having some clean no-wheel-gap fitment was basically impossible unless I stepped up to bigger wheels that would be able to touch the ground while also filling the bigger widebody fender arches. This was not a problem I had considered when I cut up the stock body and yeeted those resin fenders on lmao.
So uh, so much for all that maximum effort on the undercarriage lol. I ended up having to delete the entire front subframe, steering axle and rear brake cooling ducts. The front wheels are hot glued directly to the struts that are still there. Not my cleanest undercarriage and it’s unfortunate it ended up this way after all that effort to build a pristine and detailed underbody, but such is the price you must pay for fitment.
I still wanted to keep the side exit exhausts at all costs just because it’s one of the most novel and unique features that you’ll still be able to see on the completed model, so I grinded them down significantly so they occupied as little space underneath the chassis as possible.
After a lot of massaging with the undercarriage, we got the fitment to work! All four wheels touching the ground while maintaining a flush fitment look, plus I got to keep the side exit exhausts and the air jacks, which can still be seen on the finished kit!
It has to be said the exhaust pipes are literally still laying on the ground though, so if this thing drove it would literally be dragging its nuts everywhere, but that’s why it has the air jack system, right?
I also added some chrome plating behind the taillights to give them a reflective look through the clear red lenses
I was really debating on adding more decals to this thing to give it more details, but I enjoy the silhouette of the widebody and the body color enough that I think it’s loud enough as it is – I ended up settling for just a decal spine on the rear window instead
I really enjoy this color – usually I’m not a fan of Testors paints, but their lacquer stuff really is on par if not better than some of Tamiya’s stuff. It’s not advertised as a color shift paint, nor is it really that in principle – the metallic flakes in the purple are just so vibrant that it glows under direct sunlight.
The difference here really is just the front half of the car being in direct sunlight while the rear is in shadow. Very cool effect reminiscent of Midnight Purple II, I think.
