In the early 1960s, Henry Ford made an offer to Enzo Ferrari to purchase his auto company.  Ford really wanted to win international sports racing events and thought that the quickest way to do so was to buy the company that was dominating. Naturally, Ferrari turned him down, so Ford decided to build cars to beat them at their own game. This resulted in the Ford GT 40 (so named as its roofline was 40 inches above the ground. The car went through at least four different racing variants. The original GT 40, which was not successful, followed by the more powerful Mk I, Mk II, and Mk IV racers. The Mk.III was a streetable version of the Mk. II that was sold to a few very wealthy enthusiasts.
 

This kit is the Mk II version with the 427 engine that was the first Ford GT variant to win the Le Mans 24 hour race in 1966. By 1967, it had been replaced by the Ford Mk IV, but there were still a rather large number of cars around and they were used as back-up reserve types in case some of the new Mk.IVs failed.

Fujimi has a bunch of different boxings of the GT 40 MkII, each with different markings. This particular boxing is for the 1967 Daytona race and includes the markings of Bruce McLaren and Lucien Bianchi, the only Ford GT out of seven entered to actually finish the race. Even then it was able to finish no higher than seventh.

Molded in black and yellow plastic, the kit includes an etched fret for the rear grille as well as buckles for the seat harness. A section of harness material is also included. The body and some of the external bits are in yellow and the rest of the kit is in black. Molding is very well done with no flash, no ejector pin marks in bad places and what few sink areas are there will be invisible.

The wheels are a rubber or vinyl material and are shipped placed over the wheels. The wheels and knock-offs are chromed, which is wrong for any of the racing cars, so you'll end up stripping the chrome away. For this car, the wheels are a matte aluminum color and the knock-offs are in red. There is a large sprue of clear bits, with variations on the side and rear windows for other boxings.

Instructions are completely in Japanese, but thanks to the construction diagrams, there should be no difficulty building this one. It really is a rather simple kit since there is no engine to construct and the suspension is somewhat simplified. Color information appears to be Gunze paints so no problem there for those of us who have built a lot of Japanese kits. Decals appear to be well done and in register. It will be interesting to see how opaque the white number roundels are as yellow is a difficult color to cover with most white decals. As far as I know, there are no aftermarket replacements so one will have to do with what's in the box.

I've got to tell you that I like what I see in this kit. Sure, I'd have liked to have had a full engine, but really, for those of us who don't build a lot of cars, this one has a lot of detail and should build fairly well. Fujimi has a good reputation with their car kits and this one surely looks to be a beauty.

December 2005