Hasegawa Lancia 037 Rally Review

It wasn’t long after I got into cars that I started building model-kits. They are a bit like Lego, but accurately reproduced in 1/24 scale, as opposed to blocks/bricks.

Now that I have posted just about every cool box art, I think it is time to go through all the kits I have bought and built during 2020.

This kit is very cool and very well reproduced. The body is the typical mold plastic by Hasegawa that feels more rigid that the other brands I have used.
I didn’t like decals at all, but after assembling this kit I now love them.

This kit can be separated into 3 parts:
•The chassis
•The interior/underbody
•The engine

All three were enjoyable to assemble; the exterior has that beautiful Italian design which looks good even without the decals, the interior is bare-metal (in the real car) with bucket seats and a roll-cage, the engine is a work of art by Abarth.

Unfortunately the rear clamshell does not open, but that is not needed due to the vented rear-windscreen which gives a panoramic view of the engine. For the metal interior trim, all that was required was a can of gunmetal-grey; no fiddly paint-brushing.

There are one or two things I did not like about this kit - the first of which is that the wheels are what I call the ‘reverse-polycap design’. This means the wheels are attached by a polyester cylinder. In Aoshima’s newer kits the poly-cap slots into the wheels tightly, allowing you to easily change the wheels and slide into a specific offset.
In the Hasegawa kit, the cap sits in the brake housing. This makes it difficult to slot the wheel on since you have to line up plastic with polyester, as you can see in the photo above.

The other gripe I have is that this kit is based on the entrant into the 1994 JGTC - a 1982 Lancia 037 Rally set up for track-racing. This kit includes all the decals, including the name of the driver and Japanese flag, the side-intake vents and taped headlights, but it does not have the Work S1R wheels. This might be due to product-licensing, but this kit has the factory wheels with racing slicks instead of the offroad tyres you would normally see.

This kit does have the full set of front fog lamps and the rear bumper which are often removed depending on configuration. I decided to go with the JGTC set-up, minus the wheels, but the Group-B option is there.

Building this kit was very enjoyable, there were a couple minor inconsistencies that could be fixed, and for the first time ever, I was able to see what an 037 really looks like (I’d just known it as 8 spotlights and Martini livery).
The kit is very well-made and includes very fine details like all the grooves on the bonnet and individual hinges for the clamshell.

Highly recommended by me.