In 1993 the World Rally Championship took the fight to Ford and Lancia with their GT-Four stickered up with the famous Castrol Oils livery. Rally Monte Carlo was the first round of the championship and Juha Kankkunen & Didier Auriol were dominant in their approach. This car was somewhat of a giant killer proving excellent on tarmac, snow and gravel.

Chassis & suspension

The kit is a re-issue and suspension and chassis detail is more simplistic than the more recent kits however it still is comprehensive enough as the sumpguards and rock trays which protect the suspension cover a lot of it.

Fitment was brilliant and very solid. There was no need to alter the ride height as it is realistically reproduced according to the actual car.

Cockpit

The cockpit consists of a tub-style interior which is then glued onto the chassis. The plastic is moulded in grey therefore I recommend primer then paint as the grey colour needs a lot of coats of white to get good coverage.

All the detail you see is one solid moulded piece. A little careful painting makes it look quite nice and the black floor adds some nice colour to the base of white which the chassis and body requires.

The rollcage is realistically reproduced and fits like a dream. I constructed the cage sitting the individual pieces inside the cockpit. Once it was cemented together I then painted it and detailed the pads and extinguishers which are also moulded onto the pieces.

The interior is simplistic but don’t let this fool you. Modern WRC cars interiors are much busier than the Group A cars were so don’t fret that half the parts are missing, they are indeed all there! Seats have a nice set of red Sabelt decals, and all the dash detail consists of decals which are nice and colourful.

The Toyota cockpit also contains a spare wheel, you can see the cage in the background and once the wheel is installed there isn’t much room for anything else. This is one of the very last World Rally Championship machines to carry a spare wheel internally.

Body & decals

The famous Castrol livery looks fantastic once applied. Decals are brittle so care is needed when laying them down. There is a very fine edging on them and I highly recomment trimming it off with scissors before putting them into warm water. The main reason being the curves around the windows will allow a snug fit with no need for trimming later. The red and green which runs along the left side of the roof is one piece.

Once this base of the larger decals has been laid the smaller ones are a breeze.

Finished product

The kitset despite being an older tooling is still one of those classic must have ones. It looks great and has all the classy curves of the real deal. Fitment throughout is fantastic and despite care needing to be taken with decals it is a very easy kit to build.

There are not many Group A rally car kitsets on the market now and if you can get hold of one I highly recommend doing so. It makes a great addition next to Tamiya’s Ford Escort Cosworth kitset.

Overall I rate this kit 7.5/10 because it’s a classic livery, has the choice of 2 fantastic drivers (Kankkunen & Auriol) and looks great as an out of the box build with no additional detail. If you choose to add extra detail then this kit would look nothing short of superb!



