Allan H. Kelly

I've had a love of rallying since I was very young, and as a modeller, it is only natural that one of my themes would be rally cars. I have an association with Peugeot, as my father started his rallying in the early sixties in a 403, and continued with a 404. Internationally, Peugeot has enjoyed success over the years, with 404 and 504 models in the African Safari Rally many years ago with the Group B 205 in the 80's, and currently with the 206. So it was that I came to build up two Peugeot rally car kits - Heller's Group B 205 T16 Evo 2 and Tamiya's 206 World Rally Car. Talk about chalk and cheese! Tamiya's kit is almost state of the art, lacking only the photo-etch and vinyl bits one gets with a Hasegawa kit, and Heller's kit was more like a toy you'd give to a child who was learning to make models. (Yes, I know Tamiya does a 205 too, but I wanted the Evo 2 with its outrageous rear wing and those funny little front winglets).

I built the Tamiya 206 pretty much straight from the box, but the Heller kit required substantial work to bring it to a level I could be happy with. Here are some of the operations I performed on it:

Cut out solid moulded front grilles and replaced with actual scale grille
Replaced front winglets with thinner units
Rebuilt front spoiler
Filled holes in front bumper
Added bulkheads in front wheel wells and mudguards from plastic card
Added front mudflaps from ultra-thin vinyl
Scratch built radiator
Added driver's pedals
Scratch built seatbelts (thin vinyl) with buckles (tinfoil)
Added fillets to rollcage
Scratch built door windows with sliding openings
Added antenna
Added adjusters for rear wing
Detailed engine bay
Replaced exhaust pipe, from carefully bent aluminium tube
Added rear undershield from brass sheet
Replaced moulded-on thick plastic rear mudflaps with ultra-thin vinyl
Added wheel hubcaps

Painting and Interior

Both cars were painted white, with the 205 receiving Humbrol gloss white through the airbrush and the 206 getting a coat of Tamiya "Racing White" from a spraycan. I first undercoated the 206 with Humbrol primer, but as soon as I put the white on, it reacted and the whole messy lot had to be painstakingly removed with oven cleaner! (I left the bits in a freezer bag overnight, but it still took two attempts to get rid of it all). It was a good lesson about not mixing paints from different manufacturers. I thought that the Tamiya colour was more of a creamy white than the Humbrol. The 206 also received some aluminium paint through the airbrush for the underside, rollcage, and interior floorpan. Much of the detail painting of suspension brakes and drivetrain disappears behind wheels and undershields, but I nonetheless enjoy highlighting all the different bits and pieces in their various colours. The interior of course also gets a lot of attention, being more accessible to the eye, and various switches, warning lights, and other components are all picked out in the correct colours. Both kits use decals for the instrument panels, and they look fine. I used the Tamiya decals for the seatbelts, while I scratchbuilt the ones for the 205.

Decals

The decals in both kits were well printed and generally snuggled down nicely over the depressions and contours of the models. However, the complexity of the 206's decoration tested my patience a bit, and the decaling is not perfect. The schemes on the later, silver, cars are much simpler.

What are they?

The 205 is Bruno Saby's Group B Peugeot 205 T16 Evo. 2 which won the fifth round of the 1986 World Rally Championship, the Tour de Corse, while the 206 is Francois Delecour's 206 World Rally Car which made its debut appearance in the 1999 Tour de Corse. Despite leading the event at one point, Delecour experienced a string of problems and retired on the final stage. However, Peugeot had shown it was once again a force in the WRC, and repeating its victories of 1985 and 1986, Peugeot went on to win the Manufacturers Championship in 2000 and 2001.

These two kits are an important part of my collection of leading rally cars, and despite the problems with the Heller kit, it looks great sitting there on display beside its more modern descendants.