Hi Ron--Congradulations on buying a really nice little kit! Thanks for "excellent!!"
Man--we have a very similar story --I also "just returned to the hobby after a 30 year absence"!! crazzy huh? It's amazing how many of us there are that built models as kids--went on to lead very interesting and different lives, and now in middle-age have all this in common. March was 2 years I'm (back) in scale models--drove into it by my job in a pro model shop doing rapid prototyping and working on one part all day --making it shiny and perfect--so I started building dusty, dirty military Dio's in my "off-time" (You can see a few in the Diorama Forum)
The Citroen is my 1st car model in 30 years, and will eventually go into a Dio too. Amazing engineering like most of Tamiya's kits--but as usual there are a few odd things and a mistake or two. If you want to see a much more thorough blog of this kit, take the time to read through this blog I shared with Mark Bannerman, who started the thread, and used his build for his January 2010 Military Modelling Magazine article
This small blog here was extracted from that 1 and we shared the blog with a third builder even! (Marc) who owns one of these cars and added some great reference photos
No place on line could I find a picture of the rear of the car, and Marc happily provided them.
As for masking off the rear fenders, I guess it was one of the tuffer jobs of the build, but not too hard. I first painted the interior, let it cure, then masked-off the whole inside, and painted the bodywork black, this way I had the fender color on, and a black base for the silver---also it's way easier to mask the fender from the body thanmask the body and leave the fender exposed. Cut your tape in thin(1/8" or so) strips and it will follow the line you want to mask much better. The tricky part isn't so much the fenders but the area in the back---luckily it's hidded by the bumber somewhat, just try to make it even, and gracefully curved as you can with your pin-stripe tape. then of course place a full strip of masking tape over the stripe,and mask completely.
Hope that all helps--good luck--let me know/see how it goes!