Type AG 1910 Paris Taxi

Construction & Paint
Inside the box you will find five medium grey-coloured plastic sprues, four rubber tyres and a single clear plastic sprue. All was cleanly moulded with no signs of flash and any ejector pin marks restricted to those areas that would not be on show once the kit was completed. As with all things vehicle related, you need to plan what you will paint first because whilst you can build things like the basis chassis, once you start to add the running boards and mudguards, you need to start working with other colours. To that end I worked from the instructions, assembling certain groups of parts that needed to be painted in specific colours; in this instance, yellow, black or red. The engine is a nice multi-part unit and you will have to get out quite a few colours to paint it, although I have found the Vallejo acrylic metallics for such things as brass and chrome to be very good instead of going the whole hog with airbushing Tamiya or Gunze-Sangyo for smaller details (use a bit of flow improver with them to slow down drying and thus ease brushing them on). You will have to do the interior and exterior of all the body panels in stages 14 to 30 and that makes handling an issue. I did the interior semi-gloss black then, once dry, applied the interior colour, but you will need to remove each part entirely from the sprue before painting, so I used quite a few lollipop sticks (which you can get from craft suppliers) and Blu-Tak to hold them during the painting process. I am not one for a massively glossy finish on cars in 1/24th, especially something as vintage as this, so I just applied a gloss paint, then once dry, a quick thin coat of gloss varnish on top with no buffing or polishing because I just felt that would look better (well, to me anyway). The hinges on the side of the rear hood (#C36 and C37) are listed as being gloss black, but I wanted a bit more contrast, so painted these with a brass colour.
Construction of the main body element was complex, made worst by the fact that the main joints are all bevelled, there are no locating pins etc., which means that the joints can easily 'pop' if handled before the seam is complete dry. This increased assembly/drying time, but I found the new extra thin cement from Ammo was very good, as it hardens in 10 minutes. The brass rails (#C7) either side of the drivers seat were replaced with actual brass rood of a suitable diameter from the Albion Alloys range and I must admit that the bonnet is not secured, even if there is no way to show off the engine other than to totally remove it from the completed model. The rubber tyres are nice, I roughed up the tread area with some abrasive paper, then mashed each because sanding rubber or vinyl always makes it pick up just about every bit of dust! The wheel hubs are lovely and once painted yellow I just highlighted the hub bolts with an enamel dark wash. The only real disappointing detail was the gas lamps (C48 & F5), as the body is devoid of any mantle detail etc., so once the clear outer section (F5) is added that becomes far too apparent. A little scratchbuilding to add something inside each would, I feel, would have been worth the effort (you live and learn).
   
Colour
Truthfully you can do the kit in any combination you want, but I did it as per the box illustration, so used Tamiya red (X-7) overall with yellow (X-8) for the chassis and wheels etc. Semi-gloss black (XF-18) or Gloss Black (X-1) was used as prescribed, with the hood etc. done using NATO Black (XF-69), just to get some tonal effect. All of the detail colours were from the Vallejo series of acrylics and the gloss coat was some original Johnson's Klear.
              
Final Details
All the smaller parts are built up in the last couple of stages in the instructions, and that's the best way to approach them. The support frame in stages 50 and 51 for the hood seems a little fiddly and again there are no positive locating pins for both parts, but I got there in the end without too much swearing! About the only thing I added was a backing panel to each of the registration plates, otherwise your only option would be to secure these decals still attached to the backing paper, as no plates are included on the sprues. I used black plasticard from the Atol Hobbies range for this, as it saved having to first pre-painted white plasticard sheet.

Conclusion
The end result is nice, and the large size lends itself to this type of vehicle. I have all the others thus far released in the scale by ICM and will work through them all. Although the build had some less than positive points, I think that was more down to me not being used to building new generation ICM kits of vehicles. Don't be put off by any of my adverse comments, this is a lovely kit that with care and attention will add something a little different to the collection. Long may you continue making such subjects ICM - now, where's that Benz Patent-Motorwagen 1886!

Paints used
Alclad II
White Aluminium

Tamiya Color acrylic:
X-1 Gloss Black
X-2 Gloss White
X-7 Gloss Red
X-8 Lemon Yellow
X-22 Gloss Clear
XF-69 NATO Blac