October 2005 - Finished! 2007 update

Originally purchased cheap on eBay. Chassis built in the spring of 2005, with a few hop-ups just for my own amusement. In May 2005 I foolishly added to this car, despite the comments received, 'Looking forward next to the body painting challenge! Might not get started until the summer with my other projects'. Painting did get finished in the summer but, the guys who wrote the comments were right about the decals. What a nightmare (I've used a nice word here). The kit box and instruction manual do show badly creased stickers around the front of the Tamiya built car. I therefore stuck to my plan of painting the blue section around the front. Now the Focus is finally finished, a year and a half after first being added to my showroom, I can look back and admit; if I had tried to use the supplied decals for the front blue section there can be little doubt the body would have been binned (after being subjected to a few 'double footed jumps' first!). The painting went okay, but still getting the stickers around the front would prove 'difficult'. The manual has many of the decals numbered as one unit - twin or more sponsors motifs clustered together. Across the whole of this kit it just doesn't work, many need to be cut apart from each other, some like 'Telefonica & Movistar' need themselves to be cut in two or more pieces. If you look very closely at the 'Movistar' decal on the front corner you can see where it was cut from the blue original sticker as the colour doesn't quite match the Tamiya dark blue polycarbonate paint used. You might just see too where the 'Mov' of 'Movistar' is cut from the remainder of the letters. Finally glad it’s all over. I'm pleased that I persevered with it until the end. It's far from perfect, the rear window isn't that pretty, there are some creases and other things that have affected its final outlook. I often think that when you’re painting these cars that if you did a second it would be finished so much better. However, where the Focus WRC 02 is concerned I won't be rushing out to buy another! At the moment I have it on display with my other finished cars at work. I'm sure it will get a run someday. Model still on the shelf in this condition - July 2007.