Tl;dr – take me to the pictures!
New production runs of old kits are becoming more commonplace in recent times. The Italeri Lancia LC2 is one such example. This is a kit that requires patience, demands respect and provokes just a bit of frustration! Here’s a rundown of how I fared with mine, starting with a little history lesson.
The Italian model kit company Protar released many car and motorcycle kits from the 1960s up until the early 2000s. This included the Lancia LC2, and the Ferrari 156/85. Many of them are now fabulously rare and sought after, especially the large scale bikes and cars. Italeri bought Protar in 2003, gaining access to the treasure trove of moulds that had produced these kits. For a long while, Italeri sat on the ex-Protar tooling while the second hand market for Protar kits went bananas. But gradually, re-released versions of old Protar kits started cropping up in Italeri’s catalogues, and one of those was the Lancia LC2.
Working out which car I’m building!
The Lancia LC2 debuted in the 1983 World Endurance Championship as Lancia’s new Group C entry. It was the only serious competitor to the all-conquering Porsche 956, and proved to be fast but fragile. It took pole first time out at Monza, but didn’t run reliably over a race distance until later in the year. One of the reliability issues concerned tyres – Lancia began the season on Pirelli rubber, but soon switched to Dunlop. Why am I telling you this? It’s important for the kit!
Italeri don’t state which race the kit decals correspond to. This isn’t new – there are many examples of other kits that do the same. But do the decals correspond to any race the LC2 competed in? I wanted to make sure I would get the decals correct, particularly as there’s a few options included. My research led to some interesting findings:
- The image on the box is Photoshopped! The original photo doesn’t have many of the kit logos, including Pirelli, the #4 is re-positioned and the rear wing is totally different.
- The decals over the back rear wing supports are inaccurate.
- The LC2 only used Pirelli tyres in the first two races of 1983 – the 1000Km of Monza and 1000Km of Silverstone. But the kit is missing logos from the liveries at both races:
- That image from Silverstone suggests Lancia didn’t use the lower, smaller rear wing at that race, leaving Monza as the only realistic race that the model kit represents.
So with that said, it seemed the Monza 1000Km, the Lancia LC2’s debut, would be the race that my car would represent. Just stick it on the instruction sheet Italeri, please!
Assembling the LC2 model
While carrying out my aforementioned research, I read through previous builds of the Lancia. Others suggested the front wheels are too small and the windscreen is the wrong shape. To rectify those issues would require a lot of work – sourcing new wheels, heavily modifying the body shell and making a new windscreen. Best of luck with that! I wasn’t prepared to invest that time, so I built my kit largely out of the box.
To its credit, the kit does have a nice amount of cockpit detail, although reference pictures suggest inaccuracies here too. Away from the cockpit unfortunately there’s very little. There’s no engine or gearbox detail at all and the front suspension is completely wrong. The Lancia is very much a kerbside kit.
But having criticised the level of detail, the simplicity ensures the assembly of the LC2 kit is very straightforward. The body shell is a single large part and I attached the doors and ‘pontoon’ style rear corners for easy, consistent painting. Note the instructions say to leave the left door off until the end to attach a fiddly hose, but it’s really not worth it. It’s a bizarre detail piece in an otherwise very simple kit!
A final note on the build – the plastic required a lot of clean-up and is excessively thick in places. Unsurprising for an old, re-released kit with probably worn tooling. Just know what you’re getting into. It’s no resin kit nightmare, but does take some rectifying.
A deep breath and a prayer before the decals
I expected the Martini decals for the LC2 would be tricky, but not as testing as those on the Tamiya Porsche 935. The only problem area appeared to be the fake vents above the front wheels. Their proximity to each other and the thickness of the plastic made it impossible to open them up. I resigned myself to simply trying to get the stripes to sit over them tidily.
The quality of the decals was a big surprise. They were flexible, and generally sat well on the complex surfaces. With the mandatory decal softener in use for such an exercise, they performed very well, and I had plenty of time to fiddle with them and position them as best I could. Unfortunately I played with them too much in places and suffered some tears and misalignments. They didn’t sit perfectly in the fake vents either – hardly surprising though!
But ultimately the decal job was actually quite a smooth experience. I can’t fault Italeri for including a good quality decal sheet, and it was only my own mistakes that resulted in the flaws of the finished kit. Once the Martini stripes were on, the rest of the logos were quick and easy to add. The only downside was the black decals around the windows have to be added after the clear parts have been fixed in place. So I clear coated the shell without them, fixed the clear parts in, then added the black decals on top.
Small details and painting notes
The LC2 was built almost entirely out of the box. There wasn’t much opportunity for detail work, but I did add some carbon fibre decal and photo etch seat belts for the cockpit as that front windscreen is pretty large! The whole car comes together as two separate pieces – the upper section being all the body work and the lower section resembling the floor, cockpit and ‘chassis’.
Aside from the cockpit which received various metallic shades, the car was painted exclusively TS26 white and TS29 semi gloss black. Unsurprising really, but worth noting nonetheless. The black areas around the windows were done with decals as noted earlier, but these proved to be problematic, leaving gaps in multiple places and requiring a lot of touch-ups with a thin brush and a pot of black acrylic paint. If I were attempting the kit again (not much chance of that!) I’d probably try and find a way of spraying that black area ahead of attaching the clear parts. Sadly it was a frustrating way to finish off a generally frustrating kit.
Does Italeri value its reputation?
Shitaleri. It’s a term I’ve come across while doing the research ahead of writing this blog, used to describe Italeri’s quality (or lack of) in its kits. I can’t help but feel it’s quite accurate of the LC2 kit.
The thing is, re-releasing old kits is all well and good. For many modellers, it’s a relief to see interesting subjects like the Lancia finally readily available and at a sensible price. However, it’s all too easy for manufacturers to just sling a facsimile of the original kit components into a flashy new box. Plastic moulding and kit manufacturing has come a long way in the last 40 years. What was cutting edge in 1984 is less so in 2021.
The Italeri Lancia LC2 is just a re-boxed Protar kit with new decals. And yes, the decals are actually pretty decent. But the inaccuracies, missing details and low quality manufacturing makes me wonder why Italeri bother. Re-releasing kits like this is damaging their reputation. Sure, it’s a quick buck, but these kits aren’t worth the £20-£30 they’re retailing at (depending on where you look).
Back to the kit… My conclusions
My conclusions after building the Italeri Lancia LC2? The complex decals need patience and a lot of Micro Set. But otherwise construction is simple, so if you can look past the decals, this is a nice kit to start off with. For someone looking for an accurate depiction of an LC2 from 1983, you’ll need to make a lot of modifications and spend at least as much again on the kit to get it up to a reasonable standard. I suspect that, even with Italeri’s re-release, this will remain a fairly rare kit. It’s not a very famous car and wasn’t that successful, but it is another Martini livery, so I’m very happy to have it in my collection! It certainly won’t be the focal point on my shelf with the errors I’ve made, but it’s a nice looking car nonetheless, and I’m glad I have it finished.
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