Build Review Pt:I: Suyata's 1/32nd scale "Madness of the Street Luna & Selena"

Suyata has hit us with a whole bunch of varied and interesting model kits. "Madness of the Street Luna & Selena" is the combination of a futuristic car & driver - both in 32nd scale, with a lot of colours, armament & neo-futuristic gear on board. See how Will Vale took it on in Pt.I of his build review...

Build Review: Suyata Madness of the Street Luna & Selena (Pt:I)
From Suyata
Kit No: MS-001

1/32 Scale 

Injection Kit Pre-coloured sprues

?the figure "Selena" comes with two head choices (with base) with or without a helmet.

Length: 16 cm/ Width: 6.5 cm/ Height: 4.5 cm

Price: $26.93 AUD from Hobbylink Japan

Product Link on the Suyata Facebook Page

I recently had the pleasure of reviewing Suyata’s cute Titanic kit and while I was waiting for paint to dry on that project I found myself test-fitting a few parts from this kit. One thing led to another, and now it’s built and painted so the review is probably warranted!

MS-001 Madness of the Street Luna & Selena is a traditional plastic kit in 1/32 scale, requiring glue and paint rather than offering snap fit assembly, although some parts are moulded in colour. The subjects are Luna, a futuristic racing/combat vehicle with a cyberpunk flair, and the driver Selena. Selena can be assembled with a bare head or a helmet, and there are enough parts to build both versions which I thought was nice.

The beautiful neon-themed box art of this kit is attractive

The kit’s title and subtitle format suggest that it may be the first in a series of Madness of the Street futuristic road vehicles.

Box contents

Sprues are bagged individually, and the bodywork is moulded in vibrant orange with the chassis in dark grey. Smaller parts are split between the two colours – generally this split makes sense but it’s perhaps a little odd that the brake discs are orange. I suspect most modellers will want to paint the parts anyway, and the orange plastic will definitely help in painting the body orange, yellow or red. The kit includes a separate dark grey sprue with parts for both versions of Selena, and a set of “smoke brown” transparent parts for the glazing and lights. Four vinyl tyres, a set of polycaps and a petite decal sheet complete the package.

Some of the sprues of the kit...

The clear parts for the large canopy of the car and transparent parts is already pre-shaded...

Figure `Selena` comes with two head choices (with base) with or without a helmet.

Assembly
Test-fitting the major parts didn’t reveal any fit problems, although it is important to clean up the tall posts left behind by the ejector pins. 

There are also plenty of more typical ejector pin marks but not many of them are visible after assembly. 

I opted to fill and sand out the marks on the body interior as there are no door cards to hide them, and a few other places like the undersides of the rear light housings.

 I didn’t fill the pin marks in the wheel wells as the wheels completely fill the space and hide them nicely.

I assembled most parts with Tamiya Extra Thin Quick solvent, and filled a few small gaps like around the wing mirror mounts with a thin mixture of CA and talc. I filled the same joints from the inside as well in case they were visible inside the cabin. I scuffed up the underside of the car with coarse sandpaper to add a bit of texture to it, but the ground clearance is minimal so this is unlikely to ever be seen again!

The bodywork is a single large orange part and covers the top of the car only. Apart from adding the wing mirrors, there’s a flat plate which closes the underside of the front of the body. After test-fitting I deviated from the instructions to fit this to the body (rather than the chassis) so I could fill the seam and paint it as one assembly. It would be worth adding some bracing behind this part as the joint can flex during sanding and assembly.

There are two fairing pieces which wrap the body around the rear of the car a little, and also a very sharp spoiler. They’re moulded in grey, and I left them separate after checking their fit, so I could paint them with the body colour instead.

The complex light housings and exhaust boxes at the rear of the car needed a little pressure to bring together, and I filled the corners of the light housings with CA and talc.

The kit provides rudimentary suspension to locate inside the closed-off wheel arches. I built this separately to the chassis to make access for painting easier. The brake discs fit over the suspension parts, trapping the polycaps in place and providing the means to attach the wheels.

Armaments and defences
One of the most interesting features of this design is the skeletal roll cage/armour which wraps around the outside of the car. This incorporates a roll bar which mounts two large harpoons, and there are also spikes for the rear wheels a la Ben Hur, and more spikes to mount to the rivetted front applique armour. The rear of the car sports smoke launchers on either side between the light clusters.

I wanted to build a “courier” vehicle with a slightly sleeker look, so I filled the locating holes for the spikes and harpoons, but kept the armour and smoke launchers to hint at the dangers involved in the cyberpunk delivery trade. I also kept the two front spikes mounted between the splitter and body because I think they add a lot to the profile.

I found it was relatively easy to assemble the roll cage separately from the car. The parts are quite thin so it’s easy to flex open and clip into place after assembly. This also gives you the option of removing the cage for a civilian-looking vehicle, although you’ll need to cover the three locating holes in the glazing if you do.

Interior
The interior parts are relatively simple but crisply-moulded and quite hard to see through the smoked glazing if you leave the canopy closed. There’s certainly plenty of detail to paint if that’s your thing though, and I added seat belts from painted Aizu micron tape combined with scraps of spare etch intended for a 1/32 Stuka.

I built the seats, dash and console separately so I could paint them more easily, but assembled the rear firewall into the car before painting. It fits accurately but might benefit from a couple of lengths of sprue to reinforce the joints from inside the engine compartment.

I painted most interior components a warm green and shaded the recesses, and did the dash and console top in grey – not unlike a bomber cockpit. Since I knew that the interior would be quite dark with the smoked glazing, I added strong edge highlighting and chipping to make the parts as visible as possible through the open windscreen panel. After the airbrushed basecoats I detailed everything with Citadel acrylics and applied the provided decals for the dash instruments and map console.

To give the impression of a slight glow from the instruments I glazed around them with layers of thinned Citadel contrast paints and painted coloured glints onto edges facing the light sources.

I wanted to personalise the wheel a bit because it’s very visible, so I added a grip tape binding made from painted Aizu micron tape and secured with a dot of CA at each end. I also painted the buttons as light sources, and added a barcode with a very fine brush and a steady hand.

I replaced the provided HUD glazing and lens with tiny pieces of holographic film, which are much thinner and more in scale. They fit nicely into the spaces and catch the light in a satisfying way.

Stand by for part II of this build where we finish the kit off here on TMN that is coming just next week...

Will Vale

Thanks to Suyata for sending this kit to Will to build and review. Check out the "Suyata" Facebook page for more information on their innovative range of new kits and tools coming our way.