My father-in-law works at a BMW store near my place, and on his way home one night he stopped by with this 1/18th scale BMW M8 GTE race car kit. “We’ve been selling so many of these,” he said with a chuckle. I require no arm twisting to play with a model, so I ripped the box open and started building it as soon as he left. I had a ball with it and found it’s in a nice middle point between intricacy and simplicity, making it a great gift for both nerds and casual car enthusiasts.
I built the model over several nights, doing just a few steps at a time. It was engaging enough to keep me from being able to watch TV while assembling it, which signals a good level of attention-worthiness to me. It’s not difficult; I like to move methodically through models like this because little pieces are easy to break or lose in the carpet. Also, why slam the thing together? My kitchen table’s not a factory, and there are lots of little details in this model that are fun to inspect and appreciate as you work through the kit.
(Note: This BMW M8 model is currently out of stock on Amazon, but RASTAR has a Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, and F1 car that look similar.)
Another factor I got a little hung up on was finding a pilot. It’s a remote-controlled car when fully assembled, which means it’d be moving around. That’d look pretty strange with nobody in the driver’s seat, right? I don’t collect humanoid figurines and there was no mini race car driver in the kit, so I had to go shopping among the house tchotchkes to improvise.
First I found this African penguin—good scale with the car comedically, but he wasn’t quite the right shape to secure in the seat. Then my wife produced this weird little rubber monkey. He fit perfectly so I drafted a few seatbelt concepts. I tried cable-packing wire, a bread bag twist, and a paper clip, but ultimately a doubled-over piece of electrical tape had the right combo of functionality and form, it does look vaguely like a seat belt, right?
Strap in mister monkey, you’ve just qualified for the “get chased around the house by my family’s dogs” circuit!
I added the driver before building the rest of the car for convenience, but the doors do open on the finished model. Speaking of finishing, I only had two hangups on assembly throughout the process. The final step of marrying the chassis and body was slightly tedious (took a second to line up the pins), and getting the steering to operate required some backtracking.
The steering operates by a motor moving a little nub acting as a steering rack. But it’s easy to misalign the nub and the motor on installation because you snap them together blind. If you get this model running and it won’t steer, take the front apart again and peel the steering motor and steering box apart to double-check that the nub from the bottom is in fact slotted into the steering motor’s movement thingie. (That will make sense to anybody who’s troubleshooting).
Applying the stickers requires a steady hand, but they’re forgiving as long as you don’t firmly squeeze them on until you’re satisfied with alignment. Using a tweezer is a must—the BMW emblem for the steering wheel was hilariously tiny. I hope that little rubber monkey driver appreciates it the precision with which I applied it. As for adhesives on the model itself—there are none. One of the biggest benefits of this particular model is that it snaps together with no need for glue. That’s great because modeling glue smells nasty and can get stuck on your fingers for days—not having to deal with it is huge.
This M8’s performance as an r/c car once assembled is … acceptable. I think it’s exactly at the minimum of where it needs to be to be worth your time. It can scoot across a smooth floor and power its way across a low pile rug, but it’s pretty slow and doesn’t look like it’d last long outdoors. It would be totally fine for buzzing around your kitchen, office, or desktop. You could make a little course on your floor and race time attack with your housemates. You could plop a cigarette on its wing and transport it to somebody across a table. But it’s not the kind of thing you’ll be itching to play with or spend more time modifying and racing like you can with high-end r/cs.
That’s OK, I think the real fun here is the build. And it’ll look goof sitting static on a shelf. I say I “completed it” but I haven’t done most of the exterior stickers yet. I think I will. Eventually.
Annoyingly, between drafting this story and publishing it, I see that the RASTAR M8 is out of stock on Amazon and BMW’s accessory site (it has a BMW part number: 80 44 5 A62 7A0). However, you might find one on a shelf at a BMW dealer parts desk, and cursory research turned up a few on smaller retail websites with at least one left. If it was that hot of a seller last month, I bet the supplier will try to get another batch out in time for the Christmas gifting season so you can keep an eye on those retail links.
But if you want to take advantage of Black Friday deals or don’t want to wait, that same brand RASTAR has a Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, and even an F1 car kit that are in stock (and 20% off right now for about $50). Based on my experience with this model, I’m optimistic that those other ones will be just as much fun to build.
Know any other good model kits that can be assembled without glue? Hit up the author at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.