McLaren MP4/4 "Ayrton Senna '88"

The car that brought Ayrton Senna the first of many F1 World Championships, the McLaren MP4/4 was the result of advanced engineering combined with the mighty Honda V6 engine. Together with his teammate Alain Prost, they won all but one race during the season of 1988.

Welcome to my latest project!

The model that broke the camel's back

Posted on November 20, 2020 by Niek Nijsen

Somewhat of an all-saying title, no? I’m not referring to the fact I’ve called myself the camel in this case, but more to the part in which I break my back. And if nothing else, that’s definitely what this model has achieved. Yes, I’ve put the entire model and its parts back in the box and placed it on the shelf for now. To make matters worse, it actually pushed me to the point at which I completely cleared my desk of all models and not wanted to do any of them anymore. My mojo is gone, my back is broken.

Remember when I praised the instructions in the previous post? Yeah, scrap that. Fair enough, in general they’re very detailed and show clearly what’s expected of you. But there’s no numbering of the parts other than in said instructions. So, for example when I’m told to look for “Pin #123”, I have no bloody clue where to start, as all those pins look the same! Assuming that you eventually find the correct pin (which is a small chance after a lengthy and frustrating search), the hole it’s supposed to go into in order to hold two items together, is completely missing…

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Chaos

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Niek Nijsen

I could argue that this is the most detailed kit I've ever seen straight from the box. But then I could also argue it's the most chaotic kit I've ever seen. It's a multi-media model, which means its build-up of different parts including resin, white metal, photo-etch and rubber. Although normally a kit comes in the shape of parts attached to sprues, I found all the parts for this particular kit in small zip-lock bags that were pretty much thrown into the box. Most certainly not something I expected from a Japanese manufacturer who sells their kits for almost 500£. As a result, the delicate parts are all bend out of shape and require extensive and delicate “reshaping” to get them to fit in the overall model. And that’s not the only problem, for some reason there’s no naming or numbering like you usually have when parts are attached to a sprue. In this case, I’m simply forced to look at the manual (which is something that deserves a compliment as it is very detailed and well explained) and compare the parts laid out on the bench to find the correct one. A very time consuming and frustrating job to say the least. As I said at the start… chaos.

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