MSRP: $25.75
www.dragonusaonline.com

The original Mini automobile first hit the streets of Britain in 1959, as the British Motor Corporation's answer to the foreign-built "bubble cars", which were beginning to flood onto Britain's roads. The bubble cars appeared in response to the Suez Crisis of 1956, which had brought on "petrol" rationing. BMC Chief Executive Leonard Lord, who hated bubble cars, instructed his brilliant designer Alec Issigonis, who had previously designed the Morris Minor, to produce something that would drive the bubble car off the road. His instructions were to design a car that would seat four, use an existing BMC engine and be smaller than anything else the corporation currently produced.

Initial sales were slow, as with the Mini loaded down with innovative new features (such as the engine turned sideways and mounting the gear box beneath it in the oil sump), many potential buyers thought it too complex. However, it soon caught on with the "in set", such as film star Peter Sellers, pop stars the Beatles, and even Her Majesty, The Queen. Adding to this was the car's brilliant success in motor racing, especially in rallies such as the Monte Carlo, which it won three times. It became one of THE great success stories of 1960's Britain, the Swinging Sixties, and the Mini was seen as a "swinging" kind of car.

Sales rose and fell for various reasons over the Mini's production life and just when things might look grim, something like the 1973 Oil Crisis would come along to revive flagging sales. In the end production finally ceased in 2000, and over its 41-year production life, 5,400,000 Minis were produced, making it by far the most important British car of all time. In 1997, The Global Automotive Elections Foundation decided to choose a Car of the Century, and via a distinguished committee of world automotive engineers and designers, selected a list of 200 cars to put on a ballot. These 200 were whittled down to 26 via a panel of 132 automotive journalists from 33 countries, together with internet voting from the public around the world. These 26 were then further reduced to five finalists by a jury of professional automotive journalists. First Place went to Ford's Model T, with Second Place going to the BMC Mini, ahead of such automotive luminaries as the VW Beetle, Ford Mustang, and Porsche 911. In such high regard is the original Mini held by those who know and love automobiles.

When The Rover Group (what remained of BMC) fell upon hard times in 1994, BMW of Germany stepped in to try to rescue the firm. (Of interest is that the BMW boss at the time, Bernd Pischetsrieder, also happened to be a cousin of the Mini's designer, Alex Issigonis). However, this rescue bid failed, and BMW sold off almost all of the assets, with Land Rover going to Ford, and MG and Rover eventually ending up in Chinese hands. However BMW did hold onto the Mini name, and in 2001 launched the "New Mini", or the "Bini" as it is refered to by those who love the original Mini (as in BmwmINI).

The new Mini is technically unrelated to the original Mini design, and in fact sat side by side, the new Mini is noticeably larger than the original, being fully 20% larger in both length and width. The new Mini is also aimed at a completely different market than its predecessor, which was a low cost entry level automobile whereas the "Bini" is not, the "base" model starting at $20,000 and rising dramatically based on various options packages available.

At which point we arrive at the current models under discussion, Fujimi's 1/24th kits of the BMW Mini Cooper and Mini Cooper S "with John Cooper Works Kits". The BWM Mini Cooper comes in two main models, the Cooper and the Cooper S. The former has a 1.6 liter 16 valve 4 cyclinder engine, rated at 118hp. The Cooper S comes with the 1.6 liter 16 valve engine, but in turbo charged form, offering a big upgrade in power to 172hp. The car models differ externally mostly at the front end, as a result of the different engines, with the Cooper S having a front hood air intake that is missing from the Cooper. Internally the kits appear almost identical. However, according to the Mini USA web site (www.miniusa.com) there are literally hundreds of different options one could build into the two models so that a potential buyer can very much personalize "their" Mini.

Fujimi has built their Mini kits around a series of common sprues, together with additional sprues to allow for specific "S" parts, and the "John Cooper Works" parts. For those of you who don't know, John Cooper Works is a private British firm that has been involved with race cars in Britain for three generations. The original Minis back in the 60's had Cooper "tuner" packages available, and BMW has continued the concept with their Minis. Most of the John Cooper Works additions come in the form of uprated engine, suspension and exhaust components. Since the Fujimi kits are "curbside", there aren't that many additional parts. Most noticeable between the kits are different mag wheels, and exhausts parts.

The kit parts for both models are flash free without any noticeable ejection pin marks in visible places. There are a couple of parts in each kit with sink marks, parts D3 and D4, interior door sections. The sink marks are in easy to reach places, and should pose no difficulties in filling and sanding out. Detail on the parts is well executed and very crisply molded.

Instructions for each kit are well laid out, and the painting sections appear to call out colors from the Mr Color/Gunze Sangyo range. Thankfully the colors are all fairly basic: Black, White, Silver, Yellow etc., and so any paint range can be easily substituted. Decals are well printed, if rather basic, as one would expect for a modern car kit, consisting mostly of interior instrument decals, plus some exterior badges. Sadly for US modelers, the only license plates provided are for Japanese registered vehicles, so the modeler wishing a non-Japanese car will have to look into aftermarket license plate decals.

Looking over the instructions, note that if you follow Fujimi's notes, you can only build the two kits in an automatic transmission style, with two pedals on the floor, plus the automatic "stick". However, the parts to build a manual transmission car ARE included in the box; you just have to look for them, Sprue E, parts E9 and E15. The Cooper and Cooper S come with a 6 Speed manual transmission or an optional 6 speed automatic. Note also that the Mini Cooper S is a right hand drive vehicle, while the standard Mini Cooper kit is left hand drive, a curious difference.

One interesting feature of these two kits is the clear glass parts for the windows. On every other Japanese automobile model kit I own (numbering about 100 kits), the glass for the windows come in one or two pieces, and mount from the inside. In these two Fujimi kits, the glass is in four parts, and mounts from the outside. It will be interesting to see how this method works. Also note, each of the side window parts has a molding flaw in it, a sort of "line" through the glass. It isn't raised, but is "inside" the glass, and on each part, it is slightly different. Since it appears on both kits' parts, one presumes this will occur in every kit??

When I volunteered to review these two kits, I did so with the intention of doing a "family build" with my two children, ages 8 and 12. As a family we are "Mini Mad", owning two original Minis, 1978 and 1981 vehicles built in New Zealand. And since their debut in 2001 the kids and I always play "spot the Bini" on our trips about town. So I thought, "What an ideal project for the kids and I". However, the kits will require some tricky masking around the lower bodies of each model in order to get the black surrounds looking right. The same will be true for the externally installed windows. Time will tell how this all goes, however the family plans on having some fun trying!

Building the Binis:

I must admit that these kits are NOT for beginner modelers, unless you don't care what the end result looks like. Issue one is the tricky masking required on both models, as I mentioned in my "first look" section above. The second issue is the tricky nature of the glass parts, and the way the wheels mount to the chassis.

The instructions that Fujimi provide the modeler are very user friendly, and the kids and I had no problems figuring everything out despite almost everything being in the Japanese language. One exception is the painting instructions, where at one point in the modeling process, a color number is called out which isn't actually listed on the paint description chart. Oh well, either find a list of Gunze acrylic/Mr Color lacquerer numbers on the internet, or wing it!

The first "issue" that we ran into was from Section 1, the wheels. Fujimi has the modeler install one part V1, vinyl washer, on each wheel. When the kids went to mount the wheels to the chassis in Section 4, they found them very difficult to slide onto the pins housed in the brake parts, due to excess friction. In fact, they shattered the assembly on more than one occasion. I would suggest rubbing a pencil "lead" onto the brake "pins", to reduce the friction, or better yet, replace the vinyl V1 part with a suitable section of plastic tubing, and simply glue the wheels onto the brake housings.

The body of each model is in three main parts, a very large main body part, and then a smaller front and rear section (parts F3 and F4 for the Mini Cooper kit, and parts N5 and Q1 for the Mini Cooper S kit). Make sure you look at a real Mini to see how tightly fitting these parts are, and test fit and modify as appropriate as our parts didn't fit as tightly as required. Especially note the wheel arch areas of the smaller front sections, these should be almost seamless.

Next hurdle comes with the four main glass window sections for the kits, parts G1, G10, G11 and G5. There is some very tricky masking involved here, including masking tight curves. Also, when you go to install the four parts, trying to test fit them is tricky as well, four parts that must fit snuggly, and only two hands to grasp them with! Tape was used to help out here. Note to Fujimi: on many of their racing car kits Tamiya gives the modeler pre cut painting masks, and a similar kit component would have been a blessing on these two kits

The next hurdle is masking the wheel arches, which are black as compared to the main body color. A check of the real Mini reveals these to be separate parts from the main vehicle shell parts, with clearly demarcated "panel lines". In a perfect world, Fujimi would have provided the wheel arches as separate parts as well, which would have made for almost fool-proof painting. At the least, a nicely indented "panel line" would have helped with the cutting out of the masks required and preserved our sanity. Again, curves are involved, and the flared wheel arches on the kit parts gently flow and flatten out, making acurate masking EXTREMELY difficult. I took over from the kids here, and despite multiple tries, still botched it. NOT a job to be rushed.

Main body painting: given that the children are not well versed with airbrushing, and you can't do anywhere near a credible job painting high gloss car finishes with a paint brush, we decided to try out Tamiya's lacquer aerosol spray cans. TS-34 Camel Yellow and TS-49 Bright Red were chosen as suitable colors. The cans were shaken vigorously for 5 minutes and then placed in hot tap water for a further 5 minutes to heat up the paint, as warm paint flows more smoothly than cool paint. Then shake the can for another 1 minute prior to painting.

Learning experience: DO NOT apply more than one very thin coat of this paint at a time. Then let dry for about 15 minutes before applying a second, very light coat. We discovered that the paint is loaded down with propellant gas! If you apply a thick coat, or too many thin coats in quick succession, the gas bubbles to the surface and you get a finish that looks like the surface of the moon: burst bubbles that don't spread out, leaving craters! So a very thin coat, one pass of the can for each surface area, and then STOP. Let stand for 15 minutes, and then go for a second pass. STOP again for 15 minutes, before a third pass, and 15 minutes later, a fourth. ANY wet paint build up resulted in air bubbles frothing the surface! This said, the paint is AWESOME, drying quickly, with a very high gloss to the surface, and very hard once it has dried for a few days. (As a side note: I "decanted" a decent amount of both colors into separate glass jars by spraying the paint down a short plastic milkshake straw. The paint bubbled away furiously for a number of minutes, and then continued to de-gas for a further 24 hours. Once fully de-gassed, I was able to spray coat after coat, leaving only about 1 minute between coats, with no bubbles appearing at all. I highly recommend this process for anyone capable of using an airbrush).

Finally, when mounting the main body to the chassis, make sure you don't twist the body shell trying to mount it, or the four windows will pop off, being mounted only with white glue type cement, as is required with such clear parts.

The above might sound like we had a bad time with these kits. Yes and no. The detail on the kit parts is very nice, and with the exception of the window masking and mounting, along with the wheel arch masking, things went very nicely with construction and painting. The Tamiya spray can problem involving propellant bubbles was solved through trial and error, and having read this review, you won't have any excuse for not getting it right!

These two kits are highly recommended to those modelers experienced with masking and painting car model clear parts, and tricky curves. The kits are well detailed, and produce accurate models if approached in a cautious manner. Despite our hick-ups, the kids ended up with two very colorful models for their bedroom book shelves. Had Fujimi provided window masks and produced the kits with separate wheel arches, things would have been a breeze. But you go with what you are given, and ultimately these two kits produce very nice models.