The Monster Beetle bodyshell

The chassis is now finished and i is time to go for the bodyshell which is amazing: many parts needs to be glued (yes!). The driver (to glue on the door), the driver's head, the sun roof, the body nose, the light glasses, the wipers and the VW logo. So many parts that will have great pleasure to detach while running. I better understand why complete Monster Beetle bodyshells reach so crazy prices. In fact, this bodyshell seems to come from a static model, but it is hard to believe that is is meant for an off road vehicle that may suffer vibrations and rolls.

It also has many details to be fitted: rear lights, plate light holder (still at the rear) and manual painting has to be done for other details. I decided to reproduce the box art scheme with an "Italian" red. 

Of course, the first step is paint workshop. I placed the rear light onto the body and painted all. The lights themselves are tapped with mask because they will later be painted. In the small pictures, you can see the body nose (to be glue and fitted with two lateral small screws) and the sun roof (to be painted).

I do like the color, which is probably very shiny thanks to the white plastic it is made of: when it is black, the red is a little bit darker as I could test it on a spare part. that's pure luck because Tamiya sold this model with either white plastic bodies, or red plastic (rare) or even black plastic (probably when they released the Blitzer Beetle which color scheme is black).

Then the decoration part: cutting and applying the stickers takes some time. It is also time to glue different parts like the wipers, the VW logo, license plates and front light glasses. It is also time to manually paint the pilot and other details. By the way, the taping mask of the rear lights didn't work at all: for the moment, they are red all over, waiting for orange and white paint to detail the different lights.

I didn't glue the body nose so it it only fitted by screws. The reason is that this part has to be inserted into the main body and that the glue would have gone over the paint and damaged it. The sun roof is not glued either. I will use scotch tape from the inside of the bodyshell to fit it if I run it.

Conclusion: Glue every single parts on the bodyshell before painting. Except the wipers, the VW logo and the front and rear lights.

As you can see on the doors and the wipers, I painted some details. But my skills being what they are, I preferred not to risk on other details like windows.