Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Tamiya Model Magazine International 10/2014

Fairly recently, Fujimi and Hasegawa, mainly known for their beautiful aircraft kits, decided to produce motorcycle models too. This was a pleasant surprise as they chose to tackle innovative machines and the level of detail is impressively high. While Hasegawa is interested in the 250cc Japanese World Champions, Fujimi, has taken on the endurance machines of the 1980s. Their catalogue already lists the 1986 Suzuki GSX-R 750, 1987 Yamaha YZF-750, and the topic of this article, the 1985 Yamaha FZR 750R. In the '80s, endurance races had a renewed boost of interest and Yamaha wanted a part of the action. The bike uses a Deltabox framework developed from that of the YZR500 Grand Prix and an engine from the FZ75Ü. Fujimi's kit comes with the colours of Tech21 as ridden by Taira/Roberts but the bike that was sent to France for the '85 Bol d'Or would be ridden by Christian Sarron, Thierry Espié and Jacques Cornu. It was painted in the colours of Sonauto, the French importer of Yamaha plus a well known French tobacco company, a more logical choice for the French market than Tech21. It is this scheme that French artisan-producer 'Blue Stuff (Dexter Models) has chosen as an optional scheme for the kit, and it is produced to a very high quality. For the record, the actual bike was subsequently repainted in the Tech21 colours for the Yamaha museum in Japan, where the company took a hundred photos. These are now posted on Fujimi's website (see Modelspec for web address) providing some excellent photos to aid the modeller in their superdetailing efforts should they desire.

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