Hasegawa

1/24 YHP Nissan R89C

Kit Number: 20244

Reviewed by  Jeff Leiby, IPMS# 30249

MSRP: $44.35 Website: www.dragonmodelsusa.com History of the R89C (Courtesy of Wikipedia). The Nissan R89C was a Group C race car developed by Nissan to participate in the World Sportscar Championship and All Japan Sports Prototype Championship, as well as the 1989 24 Hours of Le Mans. Developed in conjunction with the Lola firm, the R89 featured a Kevlar and carbon-fiber based monocoque chassis (named T89/10 by Lola). Nissan's new twin-turbo VRH35Z 3.5L V8 DOHC engine was mounted in a stressed installation for better chassis rigidity and produced up to 950bhp. The VRH35Z was an improvement on the 3.0L VRH30 used in previous years. In the 1989 World Sportscar Championship season, Nissan struggled to find not only reliability, but also pace from the new chassis and engine. With this, the R89C was only able to score points in three races, but was able to finish the season fifth in the team championship. In the All Japan Sports Prototype Championship, the R89C suffered the same fate, unable to compete with its developed Porsche and Toyota opponents, leaving Nissan to finish the season third in the championship. Meanwhile, at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, three R89Cs were entered into the race. However, all three failed to finish the race due to mechanical problems. For 1990, the R89C was campaigned by Nissan for the first race of the World Sportscar Championship until it was replaced by both the R90CK and the R90CP. R89Cs would be passed on to privateer teams, with Courage Competition managing to finish 22nd in the 1990 24 Hours of Le Mans with an ex-factory R89C. Packaging & Components. The kit comes in a typical Hasegawa top opening box with the parts packed in two cellophane bags. The two part car body was packed separately while the remainder of the parts was in the second bag, including the sprue of clear parts. The decals were also packed in a separate cellophane bag. The kit is a curbside model so it has no engine and a limited interior. There are four sprues, two in black, one in white plastic and one clear sprue. There is a fifth sprue with four plastic spacers but they were not used. There was some flash on the two side windows and on the car body, otherwise the parts were clean. The decals are by Cartograf, are fairly thick and appear quite opaque - more on these later. There are two decal sheets, one for the tire markings and a second large sheet for the car. Overall there are more than 70 decals. The instructions are on a two sided three fold sheet with the construction process on one side and a five view drawing showing most of the decal locations, and history, parts map and decal and paint instructions on the other. The instructions are vague when it comes to locations of some parts and combines painting and decaling on both sides of the sheet. Finally, you also get four rubber racing slicks which all had nasty seam flash down the center of the tread. Construction I generally followed the instructions during construction with minor changes to keep some parts from being knocked off during the process. There are numerous knockout marks on the bottom of the wing and on the inside of the wing support structure. They are not readily visible during normal viewing, but will be easily discovered if the kit is entered into a contest. I left the clear parts off until just before decaling, in the case of the windshield I probably should have waited until after decaling. I constructed the cockpit tub first which has only four parts. There is no seat harness with the kit, although the seat has the holes where the harness passes through. I did not add a harness. The tub was added to the body pan which required some care as the alignment pins are very small and do not give a positive indication of proper alignment. At this point I painted the cockpit tub clear flat, as all the plastic was already black. A couple parts were then painted with steel per the instructions. A number of parts were then attached to the body pan including the front axle stubs, the gearbox with rear axles, exhaust pipes and the structure that supports the rear wing. Small parts were painted on the sprue, and then touched up after gluing in place and the gearbox was painted after it was assembled. The remainder of the parts went on the two body halves. These parts included the front wing, a multitude of air vents, headlight assemblies, mirrors, windshield wiper, side lights and tail lights. There is also a very small clear part, about the size of the top of a straight pin that I lost to the carpet mobster. It was to be a blue light lens on top of the cab. I had some trouble getting the headlight covers and the windshield to stay in place. I used PVA glue to hold all the clear parts in place. I painted and decaled the body halves and the rear wing before installing onto the body pan. The rear half of the body barely fit over the rear ties and is held in place by two pins at the rear of the body pan. The front half is attached on the edges of the floor pan. The two halves meet at the firewall along a natural joint. Painting and decaling There is only one choice of car for painting and decaling. I taped off the body and painted the blue and numerous areas that are steel or silver. The red markings are all decals. Where red is separated from the blue by a thin white line, Hasegawa included the white line on the red decal, which helped to cover minor errors with the blue paint. I had to extend the red decals at the nose with paint as apparently my guess at the lines of the blue were a little off causing the red/white lines not to meet. The decals are thick, which is a good thing, as they required a lot of moving around to get properly aligned. As you may be able to see in the photo, the decal on the roof misbehaved and wrinkled despite use of Micro Set. This one decal included the front part of the roof and the A & B pillars. It also had to fit around the roof light, an air vent on the roof and the mounting points for the windshield. If you build this kit I recommend you paint the roof. As I stated above, the decals appeared to be very opaque. It turned out as true for all but the solid white background blanks. Luckily the overlaid advertisements cover some of the darker paint that shows through. There are extra decals for the tires and I had to use one of the extras. There is no need to decal the rear tires as they are completely covered by the rear body. Conclusion This is not a kit for a first time racecar builder (like me!). The construction is not difficult, although the wing structure takes some patience. The main issue for new builders is the paint job and the massive number of large decals. However, for anyone that regularly builds racecars, this is a nice kit. The fit, except for the clear parts is excellent, and some extra photos off of the internet can supplement the vague spots in the instructions.