OutRun Ferrari Testarossa

       

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Original Kit:
Testarossa Convertible
Made By:
Monogram (kit #2782)
Scale:
1/24
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It's probably no surprise to find out that racing games have always been my favorites. There have been a lot over the years, and while the F-Zero series remains my favorite, my earliest memories go back to OutRun and its Nintendo counterpart Rad Racer. Before that, it was 2D side scrollers or single-screen games, so being able to hit the road like that was unlike anything I had seen before. And while I certainly played Rad Racer more often thanks to having the NES, I had to pay tribute to the OG.

Monogram's Testarossa convertible kit was a near-perfect representation straight out of the box. It's a well designed kit, with most parts going together with no drama. Mind you, that "most" is carrying a lot of weight here. Way, way back when I built my post-apocalyptic Testarossa, I never had to deal with the stock exhaust system. As it turns out, the pipes between the headers and the muffler can interfere with mounting the body by hanging too low and hitting the rear diffuser pan. I ended up cutting out a chunk of the pipe where it attaches to the muffler, then bending the lower pipe so it would clear the pan. It's not a pretty fix, but once the body is in place there's no way to see it. The next time I build one, I'll have to take more time to fit everything together with an eye towards clearance.

The only intentional modification I made was inside. Between races, we're given an in-cockpit view of the car adjusting the radio to select the music for the next stage. The radio was shown roughly where it should be for the Testarossa, but on top of the dashboard rather than in it. I took a small wedge of plastic and added a radio face from Detail Master and some other greebles to make it look like what we saw in the game.

I had a few options for paint. The body was, of course, bright red and painted with Tamiya TS-8 over pink primer. The interior, though, changed colors between the cabinet/box art. the gameplay, and the above-mentioned cutscene. Likewise, the lower body skirting drifted between black and gray depending on where it appeared. I chose to go with the cutscene multi-tone gray for the interior and gameplay black for the skirt to kind of make it a mix of everything. The front, rear deck, and tail grilles were also painted black. Whether for legal or hardware limitation reasons, the only badge on the car was the prancing horse on the rear, which I touched up with some chrome paint. Everything else was removed or left off, though I did add a tiny "Sega" logo to the edge of the engine cover as we saw in the posters. The final detail was a single vintage California license plate between the exhaust tips.

 

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