Overview

As an exotic model car builder, I went bonkers when this kit became available as an IPMS review candidate. The Porsche 918 kit was initially introduced on the European model market by Revell of Germany, luckily Revell USA soon picked it up and re-boxed it for the United States market, the only difference was the boxing configuration. Your hobby shop may have both the Revell USA or Revell Germany versions, the only difference is boxing and pricing. Specifically, the 918 is an exotic hybrid vehicle; main power is generated by a 4.6 litre gasoline engine and is supplemented by two electric motors on both the front and rear axles. It has astonishing performance; 0 to 60 in 2.6 seconds and 0-100 MPH in 4.9 seconds. Initial pricing of this car was a cool $845,000 less an electric federal income tax credit of $3,667 (like you and I need that for our income tax filing).

The kit includes 128 parts, a decal sheet and a well-illustrated 20-page instruction sheet. While I did not keep track of the build time, there are 129 parts listed in the instruction sheet that includes 62 building and decaling instruction frames. Well done Revell!

The Build

As many of my modeling friends know, the best and the first part of the build is painting the model car body. Luckily, I had a bottle of 2002 VW Cyber Green Colors for Miniatures in my paint stash. I love greens and CFM paints; therefore, it was a no-brainer from the get-go for that particular color choice. Since your stepping up to a $845K for the car, you should have it in any color of the rainbow including a lowly Volkswagen green.

After I assembled the body parts, there were hardly any mold lines to take care of. Those found were very easy to clean up… a hallmark of a well-engineered and designed mold. The body and various kit parts were then painted. The model was built pretty much following the instructions’ well-illustrated building frames as It was easy to plan building and painting the sub-assemblies using the frames. The kit presented no building quirks as it almost fell together.

The model is a “5” skill level. However, if you have built models for a while, the kit should not present any problems completing it in a suitable fashion. I would very much endorse this kit to semi and advanced skill modelers out there.....it builds into a very nice and well represented Porsche 918 Spyder.

I very much enjoyed the build and I thank Revell USA and the IPMS for the chance to review this awesome kit.

Summary

Very well engineered and produced, very little cleanup needed on the parts, particularly the body. Appropriately labeled as a skill level 5 assembly kit, it produces a very accurate representation of this awesome Autobahn hot rod.