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Few racing teams have captured the public imagination (or
at least the English speaking part thereof) like the 'Bentley
Boys', who won Le Mans in 1924 and then ran off a string of
four consecutive victories from 1927 through to 1930. It wasn't
because of the cars; the Bentleys of that era, while especially
well suited to the rigours of Le Mans, certainly weren't technically
innovative. Perhaps it was because the drivers were 'gentlemen
amateurs', while the Jaguar team two decades later employed
professional drivers. Or perhaps it was because the only race
reports that we 'colonials' could read were written by British
reporters, one of whom just happened to be a 'Bentley Boy'
himself.
While my engineer's head admires the planning, preparation
and precision pitwork of the Audi team (Herr Neubauer must
be smiling from somewhere!), the rest of me rooted for the
Bentley Boys when the team returned to Le Mans after a 71
year absence. I watched the races courtesy of Speedvision
and bought the Provence Moulage kits of the 2001 and 2002
Bentley Speed 8 even though I know it was only an Audi in
sheep's clothing. (Before we stir up that hornets nest again,
the cars were Audi powered but the rest was designed and built
by RTN in England - Ed). When the #7 Bentley took the the
2003 Le Mans chequered flag I fired up the old computer and
emailed my order to GPM for the Provence Moulage kit as soon
as it was released.
In a surprisingly short time the FBB appeared in my mailbox
and upon opening the kit I found pretty much what I had anticipated.
The PM kit (PM2829) has five white-metal parts, so technically
is a multi-media kit, though 15 of the 95 parts are resin
and no fewer than 57 are photo-etched. .
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Parts
and decals are included to build either the winner or the
#8 car, so a couple of those photo-etched parts and some numbers
will be left over whichever version (will anybody build the
#8 car?) you choose. There's a large sheet of instructions
with computer-generated drawings, a 10-step instruction sequence,
photo-etched parts tree 'map' and painting information, about
which more later. A second sheet contains 7 colour photos
of the completed models. These are a bit on the dark side,
so the Le Mans issue of Automodelisme (AUTO2003) is, as always,
a big help.
The resin body has some small feed tags on the bottom of the
casting and some thin flash in the window openings, but neither
presented a problem. I did miss the ragged edges inside the
radiator intake ducts until I started to mount the photo-etched
radiators; being forewarned, that shouldn't cause anyone who
reads this a problem either. I began by gluing the front airduct
tops in place (the instructions don't mention this until Step
6), along with the rear 'periscope' brake cooling scoops and
filled the seams with thick, partially dried primer. I also
glued the horizontal plate and the large outer wing end plate
(note that part includes the lower horizontal plate in spite
of what the instruction sheet shows) to the rear bodywork
and built up the rear wing as a separate piece before priming
anything. The first primer coat was also the last; other than
the joints mentioned above, there was no need for any putty
or extra primer anywhere else as my kit's body was virtually
perfect. The photo-etched parts are pretty sturdy by comparison
with those in some kits, but they turned out to be quite malleable
and the wheel spiders were easily pressed into shape with
the tool provided and showed no tendency to spring back to
a flat part. |
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| PM's
instruction sheet includes a nice 'colour palette' with eight
colours but unfortunately there's not a clue on the instructions
as to which parts are painted in any of these colours. There's
also no hint that the body sides below the stripes should
be painted black, but the we all know that by now, right?
This is where Automodelisme (AUTO2003) is very useful. The
primary body colour is given as a Rolls Royce paint, but there's
not a Rolls Royce dealership (or a Bentley one either) in
my neighbourhood so I added some gloss black to Ford 'Dark
Jade Metallic' to get a shade that matched my earlier models
(European readers might find
VW Ragusa Green as an alternative - Ed). |
I cut the vac-formed
windows into separate panels and trimmed the small lower panels
to fit inside their 'frames'. I had no problems at all and
could probably have left the upper side glass attached to
the windscreen. Final assembly was very easy, as all the sub-assemblies
pretty much dropped straight into place. The rear wing assembly
for #7 is very sturdy, though I think the single-strut wing
for the #8 car would be less so. I had clear-coated the body
to protect the smaller decals so, as a 'final touch' I gave
the 'carbon fibre' nose splitter a coat of clear semi-gloss
to provide a contrast with the glossy body. There are, of
course, many photos of the Bentleys and my finished model
looks to be 'right on' to my eye - the shape and all the details
match everything I've found. |
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The decals all fitted
very well and were easy to apply, while photos show that they're
complete and accurate too. I did disagree with PM in one instance
though; the instructions show the big outer end plate of the
#7 car covered with carbon fibre decal while in the photos
in Automodelisme it appears to be painted green. I don't believe
that the panel would be painted during practice and 'bare'
during the race, so I used the 'extra' carbon fibre decal
to finish out the interior. I'm sure that European readers
who actually saw the cars can tell me how accurate that assumption
is. The only other change I made was to paint the brake discs
- PM's photos show them to be bare metal, while they aren't
clearly visible in the Automodelisme photos, so I assumed,
again, that they are carbon discs and painted them with a
mixture of gun metal and black just to get some contrast with
the black wheels. I'm not quite sure why some of the photo-etched
latches are recessed into the body and others aren't but in
both cases they fitted well.
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Dimensions vary a few
hundredths from the values given in Automodelisme, but they
all round to 1:43rd scale and that's quite good enough for
me! You'll need some additional painting information, but
excellent castings that fit properly made the Provence Moulage
2003 Bentley Speed 8 easy - and fun! - to build.
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