I really like Tamiya's series of 1/12 scale models. Tamiya does an excellent job of engineering and detailing the parts of these kits. It is unfortunate that Tamiya no longer makes these kits. I am sure that the cost of doing the engineering and making the molds for these kits makes these kits unprofitable. The best place to find these kits is on eBay.
Above are two of my recent 1/12 scale builds, a Lotus and an Elf six wheeler. The Elf was a challenging build to say the least.
This time I'm building the Ferrari 312T. The kit was manufactured in 1975 and it has over 400 beautifully detailed parts. The engine alone has almost 200 parts.
I bought the kit on eBay. When I opened the box all the parts were in their original bags.
I took a look at the instructions and noticed a slight problem. The instructions are printed in Japanese!! I'll have to look for a set of English instructions on the Internet.
This an old kit and the white decals had turned yellow. I'll need to find a set of replacement decals in the Internet.
There are a lot of frets in this kit so I marked each fret with masking tape and a black marker. This saves a lot of time searching for the applicable fret while building.
Now, onto the build.
I'm going to start with the wheels and tires. The wheels in the kit are grey plastic. On the 1:1 car the wheels came in three styles: the rims and spokes were painted gold, the rims were chrome plated and the spokes were painted gold, the rims were polished aluminum and the spokes were panted gold. I'm going to do the polished rims and gold spokes.
The tires that come with the kit are really nice. Soft vinyl with embossed "Goodyear". However, the tires are very shiny, which is not typical of the real thing.
I am going to use a brown mud by aqualine to make the tires look dirty. This is a reactivatable acrylic wash. After the wash dries it can be reactivated, or removed, with water.
First I dipped my brush into water then into the mud wash. I painted the tread and sidewalls with the wash and then rubbed the wash off using a paper towel. If the wash dries it can be reactivated with water. I do not know if this procedure can be achieved with any other wash, so be careful.
The rims were painted with Testors' Model Master Metallizer Aluminum Plate and polished with a paper stump. The spokes were painted with Testors' gold. Note the dirty sidewalls on the tire.
I added tire pressure valves; left side, right side marks; and wheel weights. For the wheel weights I glued a small piece of plastic to the rim and covered it in Bare Metal Foil to simulate duct tape. Dust tape is used to secure the weights to the rims on the 1:1 cars.