My oldest car model is this Lancia Beta, that I bought in 1987. I don't recall the reasons for buying it, but back then that did not matter much! For its time it was a highly detailed model (more than 100 parts), and its clear body parts made it something special. 'Crystal' is the trade term for virgin clear styrene by the way.
I found two versions of this model in old Esci catalogs: #3017 in a red-white scheme (a regular model, not a 'Crystal' model with a clear body), and #3044 which is the kit shown above, in Martini colors. Kit #3017 was issued late 1981, but I don't know about #3044; both models disappeared from the catalog in 1986. They were re-issued by Heller from 1986 on, in Martini colors as far as I know (catalog number 80741). I recently found out the Esci issues were also sold by Revell, probably as Revell-Esci, with only the company name replaced on the box. See the box art below. The Beta models appears to be pretty rare now; I saw three being sold on Ebay (where they only rarely appear) in the range of 50 to 100 US$ . I paid some 6-7 euros back then. See here for a built-up model.
I worked on this model a few times during all those years, but it never got close to being finished. First some words on the 'early' work on the model. I glued the engine cover to the cockpit section, because the engine cover was warped, and wouldn't fit properly against the body. Another slight modification was performed on the 'louvres' on the front wings. The plastic was scraped thinner on the inside, creating larger openings. However, the modification lacked subtlety, and the louvres are not very regular. I also attempted to airbrush the model gloss white at some point, but the results were quite horrible, and most of it was stripped off again.
Over to the current work on the model. The clear body is rather problematic to work with, you just can't see what you are doing. Therefore I sprayed it completely with Humbrol 1 primer. After some sanding work it looked as follows.
I now could see where the model needed improvements. The nose cover was one of the worst areas, with bad filling, scratches, shrinkage areas and more problems. I used putty, CA glue and Humbrol 1 as fillers. After a careful sanding it looked like this. The photo also shows an early modification, where I cut away most of the head lamp area, that strangely lacked detail.
I realized then that the door lacked an engraving around the window area. I scribed it, but another coat of primer is necessary whether the results are good enough. With the paint gone, you just can't judge the results.
The engine bay shows lots of filled parts, that suffered heavily from mould shrinkage. But the level of detailing is quite nice, I think.
The engine was assembled at an early stage, and painted either Humbrol gun metal or Revell H91, I don't recall exactly. No more work was performed on it since.
Initially I planned to finish it with the kit decals, in my case Martini sponsoring on a white car. But then I saw the turquoise 'Fruit of the Loom' sponsored car driven by Hans Heyer, and I knew I had found a new livery for my model! I started looking around for suitable logo decals, and found out that Esci once had a BMW 320 in 'Fruit of the Loom' colors (kit number 3005, Carling Black Label or Fruit of the Loom colors). My modeling friend Julian Herrero from Spain had these decals as left-overs, and was kind enough to send them! And Gary McNutt from the GPMA mailing list sent me a slot car decal set that had Fruit of the Loom decals too. Thanks guys! This leaves a number of other decals, but most of them are single-color decals, that should be relatively easy to make on an Alps printer. Early 2003 I started making decal artwork for the car, using CorelDraw vector graphics. Shown below is the artwork for the major decals. The 'GS Sport', 'FotL' and 'Shirts' decals are largely self-made, the rest are standard logos obtained from the incredible Russian logo site. In September/October 2003 Modelers from Japan issued a resin Lancia Beta (catalog number 2433) with a decal sheet for the Fruit of the Loom car. Unfortunately this sheet could not be bought separately, so I will have to finish my Alps decal artwork. The last big job is to draw all the fruit items in the 'Fruit of the Loom' logo. I already made CorelDraw crash while drawing the grapes, so wish me luck :-)
Apart from the decals, the wheels will present another problem; they look very complex and I don't think any other kit has them. Shown below is a set of photos of the real wheels. They have 20 spokes, and I think (but haven't measured) that the dish + spokes part is almost identical in size for both front and rear wheels. For the record: Esci's wheels are 15" and 18" diameter (deducting approximately 1.6" for the tire retaining lip).
In April 2003, the wheel problem was partly cracked, when Kin-Chun Fong (Gary) wrote me that the wheels were 'Ronal' wheels. This Scala 43 page shows four different Ronal wheels of a similar style. John Cully commented that Ronal wheels were used on a large number of 1980's German Group A racers, like the BMW 635, Ford Sierra XR4Ti and RS500 and others. Kin-Chun Fong then proceeded to find a number of 1/24 kits that had wheels similar to the Beta's Ronal wheels: The Hasegawa XJ-S TWR racer has BBS wheels with 15 spokes, Fujimi has a wheel set (19147), Renaissance (France) issued a resin wheel set (24073) that has some similarities, and lastly the Fujimi Dome Zero (1979 Le Mans), which has 16" rear wheels with 18 spokes. The wheels in these kits are close, those of the Dome probably the closest, but none are real Ronals. The Dome wheels will be difficult to convert into 15" front wheels especially. John Cully reported that Monogram kit #2287 BMW 635 'Group 2' has a set of typical 'discs' of a Ronal type design. The search continues!
Late 2005, another lead developped, with thanks to Eric Verschuur. Some kits of the late seventies/early eighties Pontiac Firebird contain wheels that appear to be Ronals, even with the correct number of spokes (20). So far identified are:
This Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am site has a very extensive listing that I need to study some more to find the best suitable wheels. It's possible that I need 1/32 wheels for my Beta!
Other modifications necessary are NACAs inlet ahead of the front wheels, and black strakes on the sides of the hood. I found a photo in Modell Magazin 6/84 that shows an Esci Lancia modified just like I plan to do. The model was built by the 'WMS Modellbauteam Düsseldorf" according to the caption. The wheels are not correct though.
More later!