I need advice about a car body molded in color, please...

Hi Dave;

     I have found that certain mfgrs. get it right. There many old Monogram models sitting on my shelves. Factory stock and no paint. Why? the molded color was so beautiful, cleanup and polish was the order of the day. I always did paint the interior of the bodies to solve transluscency problems but that was force of habit not need.

   I have noticed though-Don't laugh please? Take Tamiya, Hasegawa and Monogram models molded in black. None of them are the same color! This happens when the base color is predicated on the Red, Blue or Green base of the color spectrum, there's also a base Blue takeoff that seems purplish in certain light. That's the technical side of it. If the molding is good, you like the color, then leave it alone if YOU wish, It's your Model! Right!?

I have done that a couple times.  Clean up, polish and clear.  This Tamiya Porsche was molded in beautiful black plastic so I went unpainted.  I'll do that with Tamiya satin black parts as well.  Many times I discovered they looked identical after painting.

I'm considering doing the same with this beautifully molded Tamiya McLaren.  Just spray the red/orange over the white body.

Styrene is not perfectly opaque, so the reflection of light you see partially comes from under the surface, so you never get a really good gloss.  I have used a good clear gloss coat a few times, with good results.  Yes, you must carefully treat those sprue attachment sites, finishing with fine sanding, at least 600 or higher.

A clear coat first, gives no advantage in prepping and sanding out mold lines. IMO anyway. And as to the success of a finished plastic with no paint,that's subject to the opacity of the plasic color and how much light blocking capability it has. Not to mention the purity of the color from all angles viewed. . In some cases it's easier to paint the model. That said, I once built a silver 1/8 Jaguar with no paint on the body and it turned out quite well I thought. But the plastic color was even and looked great out of the box. This was years ago and I thought to myself, I'll never color match that exact silver.

On the flip side, I received a couple of kits molded in baby blue through the years and there were color dye swirls in the blue and fairly transluscent  plastic. All the fancy treatment in the world wouldn't make a no paint build practical. The only way to give any realistic appearance to these was to paint them. Even the first coat brought life into the kit. Even primer made them opaque at least. Some plastics without paint would make good lamp shade material and will always give at least an edge glow in light. So in the end it depends on the kits plastic.

I have a couple of cars that were molded in color and all I do is clean them up and polish them with fine compound then wax, no clear works great.