I'm waiting for some stuff to arrive before I can finish of my Monte Carlo Mini and the Alpine Renault A110, so in the mean time I decided to crack open this box:

I haven't had this kit in my stash for very long, but the moment I bought it I knew it wouldn't take too long before I attempted to build this model. Having said that, I've never build a Hasegawa kit in my life, so fingers crossed. Hopefully there are no major fit issues.
There are a few things I immediately noticed when opening the box though. First off is the amount of flash... This kit was released in 2000, yet I have some kits in my stash that are far older than that and that show almost no flash. So there will be a lot of cleanup to do. Secondly is the amount of parts. The box is listing 146 of them spead over 6 sprues. This is about double of what I'm used to of a Tamiya or Revell kit within the same price range (I paid about 30 Euro's for the Lancia):
Yes that's flash running down the middle of the sprue... The parts aren't as bad, but there is still a fair bit of flash on them.




With so much flash on the sprues, I'd had expected to find some nasty mould lines on the body work. The weird part is that there were only two little ones on the sides of the bonnet that took only about a minute to remove. The rest of the bodywork is flawless and needs almost no prep before priming.


Quite a lot of decals which is good, cause I love decalling...


There's also an instruction sheet in the box (lucky me) but I din't take any pictures of that.