Sometimes, things just come at you out of the blue. They can be good or bad, but surprises always carry their own sense of wonder and gravitas simply because they are unexpected. I mean, if you knew a bird was going to poop on your ice cream cone at the beach, it wouldn’t be nearly as annoyingly comical, now would it?
However, some of my favourite kinds of surprises are, not surprisingly, related to models. I love seeing something I never knew existed, even if I can’t get it. It gives me something to shoot for, a new target for my collector’s passion. And then there’s the ultimate thrill, the waiting, the anticipation of getting a kit (or crate) of models in the mail. I happen to be very lucky, as I had this first happen when I won the Gundam Mid-Year Contest in 2015.
I have also “won” in other ways, and that’s by winning the kindness of my readers. I have had some kits sent to me because people realize certain subjects are “my thing” and know I’ll give them a nice home. This doesn’t happen often, but thanks to Alan, it has happened twice! Thanks to the Lagoon, I’ve gotten to know some pretty great people who share my passion and are willing to help me out.
Kindness and Esoterica:
One such person just appeared in my inbox a couple of weeks ago. He told me that he’d been following the Lagoon for a while, and knew that I had a penchant for the weird and wonderful (and sometimes crappy). He then sent me a pics of a few kit’s I’d never even seen before, that he’d discovered at a somewhat-local hobby shop in Texas. He thought they’d be up my alley, and man, were they ever! You wanna talk weird? They were all US Airfix kits, and there was a Lamborghini Silhouette, a Maserati Boomerang and a Lamborghini Ital.
I hadn’t heard of the first two, and the Ital looked just like a BMW M1. I was awestruck; I have one US Airfix kit, and it was the Firebird K-Wagen “snap-fix” kit that I got in the 2018 London Model Show Haul. I wasn’t really familiar with the maker, and had no idea what kind of a product line they had. Well, I had a better understanding now! The kits were kitschy, weird and dripping with ‘70s and early ‘80s machismo and cheese in turn. I was delighted to see these bizarre kits, and they indeed put a smile on my face.
This only got bigger when he offered to send me one next time he was at the shop. A bit of time went by and one day I got another email from him telling me he’d not only got me one, but ALL THREE of the kits, and would be sending them up to me soon! You want to talk about totally unsolicited kindness! And they say the world is going to the devil… well, not without a fight, it would seem.
So, who is this mysterious benefactor? He has asked me to refer to him as “Special Agent Bum Steer of Texas”. That’s a long code name, but hey, I don’t mind at all, and he himself shortened it to “Bum”. So, by his own asking, that’s how we’ll refer to him henceforth. (Note: His name is completely ironic. He is by no means a “bum” in the traditional sense, and is a wonderful person with a big heart.)
It wasn’t long until I came home to find a very large FedEx box on my porch. Let’s crack it open and see what my friend has shipped up from the Lone Star State all the way to the Great White North, eh?
Just (Not) Winging It!
The first thing that I saw when I opened the box, was in fact something I didn’t even expect to see! It was a Fujimi Ferrari 126 C2 Formula1 Car! This hadn’t been mentioned, but it was definitely cool! The box was entirely Ferrari red with a very nice “from above”, nose-on shot of the F1 car within. There was also a note attached, essentially telling me that this Gilles Villeneuve car had been thrown in as a bonus. I don’t have any F1 cars, so that is really neat! What made it even more interesting was that the note mentioned it was a “no front wing” car. Taking a look back at the box art, I realized Bum was right! It hadn’t struck me, but there was, indeed, no front wing on the car! I can’t say that I’ve ever seen an F1 car like that! Now, I know others out there who know this stuff cold will scoff at my ignorance, but that’s fine. Thanks to this kit’s inclusion, not only did I get a very cool kit of a kind of car I’ve never built before, it’s also going to drive me to learn about a whole segment of motorsports and design I also know nothing about! (Added bonus, Gilles Villeneuve was even Canadian!)
Taking a look inside the box I was blown away. I know that some F1 car kits have really impressive and complicated internal systems. This one looks like it’s not quite as over the top as that, but there are a lot of parts for the engine and braking systems, and some of the cleanest chrome I have ever seen. Interestingly, on the chrome rack there is, indeed, a front wing! There’s also a large and colourful decal sheet, as one might expect for a race car such as this. The wheels looked amazing, being attached at the back in the great Japanese tradition, thereby ensuring the brushed aluminum finish is not damaged by cutting the parts off the rack.
And, as was intimated on the note, the bodyshell was, indeed, clear! I’m assuming it’s so you can put it on and still see the crazy engine/radiator stuff inside. That’s a neat idea I’ve seen on some airplanes, but I’ve only ever seen it done on cars once or twice, and only on the hoods. I guess since an F1 car is basically all engine, though, this makes sense. The instructions look good, and seem to have a lot of detail on them. One thing they do show is that the front wing is optional – Gilles Villeneuve’s car doesn’t have it, but the other one, driven by Didier Pironi does. So you can take your pick. I know I’ll build it without the wing, just because it looks so odd…
Fat Lip and a Chicken:
Next up was the Lamborghini Silhouette, which is not a car that I was familiar with at all. I had to look it up and was astounded to find out that it was a very low-run car that preceded the Jalpa. The fact that they only made 50-odd of them really didn’t help with my knowing it. I was also amazed to find out that my 2009 Pontiac G8 GT, a normal, everyday production car, has performance that eclipses this late-‘70s Lambo. Now THAT’S progress!
As it turns out, the Silhouette is a very handsome car, and I am very much a fan of it. However, you’d never know it was good looking from this box’s ridiculous front picture! I mean, you’ve got a yellow box with medium blue writing, and then the car is parked against a black background. This makes it hard to see the outline of the dark blue Lambo very well, but there are a few things that “stick out”, shall I say?
Firstly, I honestly thought this car was a Triumph TR7 or Fiat X-1/9. It was some weird Euro-Targa roof thing with pop-up headlights and a mid-mounted engine. You can’t blame me when you look at that box art, can you? It looks about as much like a Lambo as fly in the air. Not helping this at all was the MASSIVE, apparently American-spec front bumper! This looks completely, utterly, bat-crap insane.
I mean, it makes Daffy Duck’s schnoz seem dainty by comparison! The poor car looks like it’s having an allergic reaction to something! I didn’t realize that Lambos ever went in for the “anaphylactic shock” look, but man, I guess I was wrong! This ridiculous proboscis, however, is only one of the weird aspects of this car, tough. Now, don’t tell me that you missed it, because the weirdest part is the easiest to see! Yep, that’s it, the 1977-style Trans/Am Flaming Chicken right on the hood. What could possibly have been more utterly, and inappropriately, perfect for this kit?
That’s right: US Airfix didn’t seem to think that being an exotic Italian Supercar would entice casual buyers. Nobody knows a Lambo Silhouette. But a gold “Smokey and the Bandit” Firechicken… that’s a guaranteed sale! I’ve not seen anything wallowing so solidly in the ‘70s zeitgeist on any other kit that I own. I mean, the gold striping, grilles on the engine deck and big chicken make the poor kit look like one of those barely-formed, super-cheap dollar store HotWheels knockoffs. The angle of the picture doesn’t accentuate one positive aspect of the car. But it has steerable wheels, so that makes up for it, right?
The side of the box shows some of the features of the kit, and the “Air dam for road hugging capability” is my favourite. I guess it sounded better than “Giant schnoz to satisfy weenie-government-interference crash regulations”, eh? You can also see the nice gold engine vents (essential for T/A like performance!) and a wonderful thickly-brown interior. I’m not really sure why this kit is so on fire about the steerable wheels, but you also get another look at them on the side. Can’t say I see that being the make-or-break point of the kit, but hey, I didn’t think it was a Trans Am, either!
This box does have a neat back panel, in full colour, since the box opens like a pizza box. I love that they say a feature is “one-piece body with high-speed styling”. Uh, you can’t take credit for that, US Airfix. But, just in case you missed it on the front cover, check out how out-of-place and lost the front wheel looks in that fender opening. It’s like it’s the wrong scale!
Inside the box, one finds a surprisingly nice, if not excessively simple kit. It is Japanese in origin; this one is an Eidai Grip kit. I am glad to say that the kit looks much better than the box pic would suggest. Like most Japanese car kits, it is a curbsider, with minimal interior and no chassis detail. It could be motorized, it seems, since there is a battery compartment, but there’s no motor or drivetrain included. The body is dark blue, and the rest of the kit is black. The glass looks good, and I’m happy to say that the bumper doesn’t look as big in real life as it does on the box! All in all, it will need some work, but I think it’ll look good, especially without the Screaming Chicken. (Sorry, all you Burt Reynolds x Tony Danza fans out there…, you know, both of you…)
The good news is that the box didn’t like about the hood bird! There’s a sheet with the gold stripes and the hood bird with the kit. The catch is that they are dry transfers. Not sure why they do this, but they did warn us on the box, so I wasn’t as surprised as I was disappointed. I don’t really see the reason for these other than the folks at USAirfix wanted to market the kits to a group that found waterslide decals too complicated. This implies to me that these were aimed more at kids than serious modellers. Thankfully, I don’t need or want to use the decals, so I’m okay. I think that the Silhouette will be just fine with a more conventional, less Coors-hauling, livery.
Overall, despite how hard the box has worked to make this kit look bad, I think it will build up decently. The Silhouette is a nice-looking car, and while this kit may not do it justice, it certainly doesn’t look like it will desecrate its name the way our built-up example would suggest.
Atomic Wedgie!
If you know the ‘70s and ‘80s, you know that there was a certain love of wedgy, sharp-edged styling. “The point was the thing”, you might say. This is most brutally accentuated by the still-over-the-top, unrestrained triangular Lambo that defined the decade; the Countach. I’ve always loved it, and I’ve always thought there could not be a wedgier car. I was wrong. So wrong.
As one might expect from a ‘70s Italian showcar, the Maserati Boomerang eschewed curves for the hard edges and futuristic shape of the triangle. Perhaps no car looks more like a Driving Pink Pearl school eraser than this utterly bizarre creation. As a showcar, the Boomerang was built without consideration of safety standards, or even logic. It has no front bumper, just a Dust Buster-like pointy-end, complete, of course, with popup headlights. It has massive, glass area, including a monstrous front window, glass roof and doors that not only angle sharply outward, but are also nearly all glass. Oddly, the back deck is NOT a hatchback; there’s an open engine deck with a flying buttress roof.
All of this is conveyed by the stunningly stark front three-quarters view of the Boomerang that adorns the lid of this kit. There’s no way you can’t tell it’s a MASERATI, since the font on the box is immense. It kinda mentions that it’s a Boomerang thereafter, but if words were sounds, the Maserati writing would be a sharp trumpet blast like during the announcing of a Royal arrival.
The car itself is stunningly weird, and its ice-blue paint is very attractive. The lettered tires look weird on a showcar, as they did on the Silhouette, to be honest. The striping and “Boomerang” name seem out of place, but when one remembers the Ferrari Rainbow, it’s not as surprising as you’d think. The side of the box gives a different view, and allows us to see the back, and the very-protruding exhaust pipes to good effect. It also lets you see the wheels, which are, quite honestly, completely bizarre. The whole car is quite literally how the future looked in the ‘70s.
The other side of the box shows some more shots of the assembled kit, and like the Silhouette, show some features. The first is the absolutely gonzo instrument cluster/steering wheel/ring thing. This is actually how the car looks, with the wheel rotating around the instruments. Even though the kit isn’t very detailed, reproducing this is to be commended. You can also see that here’s a lot of glass and some exhausts that really do stick out a country mile. Still not sure that lettered Good Years belong on an Italian showcar, but one thing that does are the super-weird wheels. They’re like an analog definition of a digital echo, or the result of using a salad-spinner for a hubcap!
The back of the pizza-style flip-open box shows, again like the Silhouette, a closer version of the car. At this size, you can really see what a crappy paintjob it has; the amount of orange peel on the hood is extreme! (The Silhouette also had this “feature”). Speaking of features, the back of the box lists what you can expect from this kit. First up is “Exotic wedge-shaped design”. Granted, this is not a kit feature per se, but it is perhaps the understatement of the year! It also mentions “Gull-wing door styling”. Again, US Airfix, features of the real car aren’t anything to hang your hat on! Of course it has that, the real car has gullwing doors! (It would be like saying the Monogram T/A has “Late ‘70s Pontiac styling”. C’mon man… put some effort into it…) Note that, however, the kit doors do not open. This is also a curbsider, and a very simple one at that.
The kit has a body shell, a very simple interior bucket and one rack of black parts. There is also a glass rack, and a very large front window/roof piece that is, amazingly, in good shape. Now we see where US Airfix got cheap: the chrome rack. There isn’t one. Unlike the Eidai Grip original, which had the wheels, exhausts and a couple of other small details in a brushed metal/chrome colour, this kit just has that same rack in black. So, it’s not just that US Airfix bought the kit from Eidai and repacked it in a much more slovenly box, but they must have bought the moulds and actively cheaped out on making the kit. Well done.
Of course, like the Silhouette, and as mentioned on the box, this kit comes with dry transfers for the completely inauthentic striping. I wish this had the proper Maserati trident for the hood at least, but nope… Not sure why you’d want dry transfers for a kit, but I’m glad their inappropriate, so I don’t have to use them!
The kit, like the Silhouette, is very simple. However, it does have decent carpeting detail on the interior. Oddly the same texture continues out onto the engine decking. To me, that seems a bit odd; they wouldn’t have carpeted what amounts to the hood, would they? Well, I doubt it, but I can’t say that I’m confident in that. When you look at how outlandish this car is, anything is possible!
ITAL Blow Your Mind:
There are some kits that get made ahead of their time. This happens when companies want to be the first out with a kit, and the base the model on whatever information they can get, and just massage in the rest. A great example is the Testors F-19, a kit of a plane so secretive that it didn’t even exist! We’ve seen at least one or two of these on the Lagoon, too. Perhaps the most glaring being the MPC 1978 Pacer X. While it seemed like a good idea for MPC to just use the ’77 Annual Pacer X and give it the new front, the got bitten; there wasn’t a 1978 Pacer X!
This last kit in my Texas shipment was one just like that. It was a Lamborghini Ital. “A what?” you ask, perplexed. Tired of waiting for an answer, you Google it, and get absolutely nothing of value. How can it not exist? Oh, very easily, as it turns out! Let’s just calm down and look at the box, shall we?
As if to mock the sum total of human knowledge that is the internet, the box has a big, blue band across the top proclaiming this, in large, white, block-capital letters, to be a Laborghini Ital. Even if YOU’RE not sure, IT is. It’s also sure that there are WORKING* LIGHTS! It’s so sure, that it has even outlined this in a yellow, spikey word balloon that would be just as at home spelling out sound effects for one of Batman’s fist fights!
Below this is a top, front-three-quarters view of a car most of us recognize the shape of. “Why, that’s a BMW M1! That’s no Lambo!” I hear you say. And you’re right, but also kind of wrong. The M1 was a very strange case of automotive collaboration. BMW wanted a supercar, but didn’t know exactly how to engineer it, and Lambo knew that stuff, but was going broke, So, naturally, they got together. Things didn’t go smoothly, (as other historical German/Italian relationships haven’t), and BMW ended up doing most of the work, with the engineering being finished off by ex-Lamborghini employees who started their own company. Really, the history of the M1 is fascinating story of unnecessary complication, and anyone interested is encouraged to find out for themselves, as it takes more room than I’m willing to devote to it here.
This kit, though, is another story. It too, is something of a Frankenstein’s monster, but not in the same, eventually-successful-if-not-short-lived way as its erstwhile subject matter.
The one side of the box shows us some of the kit’s features, including red tail lights , working headlights and steerable front wheels. They also mention a “detailed interior”, which is a total lie, but that’s to be expected. Why, because, quite honestly, this whole kit is something of a lie, or at least an honest misrepresentation. Not only does the Lamborghini Ital not seem to exist, as mentioned, but as a BMW M1, this kit is, to use the kids’ modern internet lingo, “sus” as all get out.
From the box lid, BMW aficionados might recognize a few things that are a bit “off” about this legendary “first of the M-Series”. Firstly, while the wheels look kinda-right, they’re too deeply dished to match the mega “Late ‘70s-Future” vibe of the real car. Secondly, there’s that strange black patch in the front decking: normal M1s have three louvers there, not a weird extra bit and two louvers. Thirdly, the rear window is somewhat too large, and its aspect ratio is a bit off as well. However, the most egregious errors are at the nose.
The most obvious, to me, was the BMW blue/white circle (mispainted in silver) right there at the front end. “Why is there a BMW circle on my Lambo?” A valid question. There’s also the weirdly chromed grilles mounted low. These remind me a bit of those on Corvettes or T/As of the period, like Faust. There’s a turn signal and a grille. Well, that seems right, but the signals stick out too much, and the grilles are supposed to be HORIZONTALLY slotted! These are vertical, and it makes it look like the car has a heat register glued to the front of it! Then, there’s a detail I missed, despite it being so glaringly obvious…
That detail, is the traditional BMW “twin kidney” grille treatmet right at the very tip of the nose. My brain must have seen what it wanted to see, because it took my brother looking at it and asking me about it to make me see it; there are THREE of them! What, in the actual… THREE?? Yes, friends, this poor kit is basically a dollar store ripoff/knockoff of an M1. Details have been changed to protect the innocent? Is it a case of that, or that the mould maker didn’t want to have to pay copyright fees?
In the box, we get a couple of racks of back parts as well as a bright orange body shell. As with the other US Airfix kits reviewed here today, this one has hits origins in Japan, being originally issued as No. 3 of the “Dynamic Europe Series” by Tsukuda, not a name many of us encounter very often. The kit is the same as the Tsukuda kit, although the original had a chrome rack, which in this kit is just moulded in black. Interestingly, the red tail lights shown have to be painted, as the are moulded in clear glass and attached to the main windows. This is another hallmark of Japanese car kits, and comes as no surprise.
The kit is a curbsider, and can be motorized; there’s even an order form in the box for a motor! The chassis is very un-detailed and broken up by the battery compartment. There’s a hint of engine detail down here, but honestly, it’s really basic and embarrassingly shallow. Their “detailed interior” is anything but: There’s no carpet detail and you can forget about anything on the sidewalls. The dashboard is very basic too. Then things get really, really weird. For some reason, this car has FOUR SEATS. Yeah, you read that right, FOUR. To my knowledge, there were only two seats in the BMW M1. Why, or how, this car has four seats is beyond me. Is that what makes it an Ital? Was the Ital like a Ferrari Mondial? Or is this car like a Corvette America, but from Europe? I can’t even guess…
The light-up headlights are included, and are actually little bulbs, not LEDs like you would see now. This is old-skool tech, man! Oddly, there are holes in the tail lights for them to be lit, but no bulbs. Further, the tail lights are just clear blocks; there is no detailed separation of the red, clear and orange as on the real car, so this will have to be done by hand (if you care to, that is). This is despite the instructions at least showing the backup lights being differentiated. On other odd feature is that there are no covers to build the headlights closed! I’m not used to seeing that!
This kit’s instructions are pretty basic, and are cribbed right from the Tsukuda originals, although there is English text, which I guess in helpful to a degree. The decals are, despite the claim of being “colourful” on the box, little more than slme black stripes. The thinner go around the middle of the car, but the larger ones are a mystery to me. There are no decalling instructions, and the decals aren’t numbered, so I guess imagination is the key?
This kit is a textbook case of misrepresentation on almost every level. It’s cavorting as a brand and type of car that it isn’t, never was, and never even existed. It’s incorrect for what it’s supposed to be, with gross detail failures and inexcusable shape issues. Of all three of the USAirfix kits, this one is by far the cheapest feeling, most poorly-executed, and oddest. That is, amazingly, not USAirfix’s fault! The only worked with what they were given.
On the original box, it is called a Lamborghini Ital/BMW E-26 (the M1s internal code number). The box shows it with the correct wheels, kidney grilles and overall shape. That’s because the original box shows a drawing of an M1 (although the weird black “front louvre” is still there), not a picture of the kit. All of the “copyright skirting” touches are a function of the original, not something USAirfix did. If anything, USAirfix should be commended for at least trying to adhere to truth in advertising. Their box art of a built-up kit shows you almost every flaw in this model, so if you crack the box expecting an M1 and are disappointed, you only have yourself, and Tsukuda, to blame.
This kit is a very low-rent model of a fascinating car, and the weird liberties taken with its design make it extremely interesting. I’m very glad to have this one, and it’s one that a BMW completist should really strive to have, even if only to show how wrong some makers can get it!
Into the Sunset:
So that was what awaited me in my surprise box from Texas. As you can see, it was a veritable stampede of weird subjects, with differing levels of finesse both in the original execution and in the presentation Stateside.
USAirfix was never a major player in the kit field, and now I think I know why. They seem to have taken whatever moulds they could get from whoever would sell them and then tried to copy the MPC, Monogram or Ertl style on their box presentation. Just like their catalogue most have been, these three kits are jumbles of recycled ideas and a confused approach to packaging. While the Japanese kits are rare, these ones are just as hard-to-come-by, and I think you might have a better chance scoring the originals.
These are colourful, interesting and, quite honestly hilarious additions to my stash. They’re kind of like a trilogy of “so bad they’re good” movies; they have little to recommend them as models, but so much oddball charm and zeitgeist that you can’t help but love ‘em!
My thanks to Special Agent Bum Steer of Texas for wrangling these Italian Stallions for me, and shipping them off to the Great White North; I’m sure I’d have never seen their likes otherwise!
The Sprue Lagoon 