Building single-seaters at 1:24 means speaking the language of the most common car-kit size: a monoposto comes out around 19 cm and shares the shelf happily with a coupé or a tractor unit of the same scale. The selection has a character of its own – alongside well-known Grand Prix cars, including a boxing with metal engine components, it offers F3000 single-seaters in Japanese team colours, an experimental delta-planform endurance car and the winner of the first Japanese Grand Prix. For collectors, it is a scale full of subjects you will not meet elsewhere.
1:20 is the classic formula size, but 1:24 has a different virtue: a consistent collection. A single-seater, a road coupé and even a lorry stay the same scale, so one shelf can tell the whole motoring story. The 1:24 range also reaches outside the premier championship, to the F3000 cars that trained a generation of champions in the 1990s and to the stranger experiments of endurance racing.
Grand Prix cars carry famous names and rich engineering. F3000 single-seaters offer the same chassis in a variety of team colours, which is an invitation to build a small starting grid from one season with every car in a different livery.
Standard kits concentrate on silhouette and livery; boxings with metal engine parts add photo-etched and turned components that give you useful practice with cyanoacrylate and metal surfaces.
The team schemes of the 1990s are among the most beautiful in motorsport. Lay decals onto a gloss coat, mask intricate colour divisions rather than freehanding them, and seal the result under clear. Where a marking has to wrap around a sharp edge, cut it rather than stretch it; two pieces that meet cleanly read better than one that has silvered along the fold.
The traditional format with the widest choice is 1:20 formula car model kits, and every single-seater is listed under formula car model kits. Road-going neighbours for a consistent collection come from 1:24 and 1:25 car model kits; after that, all you need is a decent model glue and a free evening.
