Mark's Models: February 2026

Jeremy Clarkson is fond of saying that all Porsche's look the same. And for the most part, that's true. He would also remind you that they are just VW Beetles, and again, he wouldn't be wrong. The man that designed the Beetle was Ferdinand Porsche, and in Germany in the 1930s he was told to make a car for the people, and the basic shape of the Beetle was born.

Then, in the 40's, after all that loud nonsense that happened in Germany, Ferdinand Porsche's son decided to create his own sports car.

There weren't a whole lot of options for bespoke sports car building in Europe at the time, at least not in Germany, so he started with the chassis, suspension and engine from the Beetle, and the Porsche 357 was born.

Fast forward to 1995 and Porsche, now a global sports car icon, wanted to race their cars in the newly created GT2 class that had been created by FIA, the world racing management body, by using a turbocharged 911.

There was just one problem. The 993 era 911s were AWD, and the rules said it had to be RWD. There also had to be a certain number of production examples produced that were street legal in order to meet the GT class of racing was created for production-based race cars. This meant that a manufacturer had to show that their race car was based on a road legal car, and not purely a prototype.

This led Porsche to design a race car first and a road car based off of that.

That's why if you ever see a GT2 (of which only 194 were built) you'll notice that there are no luxury items in the car. No soundproofing, no backseats. There's even a roll cage. The ditched the AWD system and kept the racing RWD setup for the road car, and there were no safety features like anti lock brakes or airbags.

By 2001, Porsche was no longer racing the GT2, but they continued to build the car based on the 996. It was a "skunkworks" project for them, notably to see just how much raw power they could get in a RWD 911.

The purposely overpowered basis of the car, plus the lack of modern safety features, soon led to the nickname "The Widowmaker".

A bit ominous, but you can't deny the allure of the car. From the bolt on fender flares that cover the comically huge rear tires to the five point harness and roll cage, everything about the thing screams "road monster".

Tamiya's scale model of the GT2 road car reflects all of these philosophies. The model itself was a pleasure to work on and very fun indeed. Parts fit with no fuss, and the details were well done.

Even the comically complex rear spoiler has the GT2 logo stamped on the side.

I really wanted to do this car justice, as it has such and interesting history and the kit is so well made in my opinion. It really is one of the best paint jobs I've done.

So.. to the building!

Body, Body, Body!

After sanding off any mold lines I keyed the body with 3000 grit sanding sponge and degreased the whole model. You can use specialty degreaser or rubbing alcohol, it's all mostly the same stuff and does the same trick - removes oils and finger prints (and dust from the sandpaper).

Then I used ProScale's Grey Micro-filler primer. The micro-filler primer fills in the micro abrasive scratches put in when sanding the body with the 3000 grid sponge, which gives the primer a really strong bond to the plastic, ensuring that the later paints grip strong as well.

Primer, yum.

I don't know what it is about primer, but this is one of my favorite stages. I suppose it's because it represents the potential of what the project could be. There's not a lot of disappointments or mistakes that can't be fixed, just what it could yet be. It's satisfying first stage of the body work.

After getting the primer dried I sanded it down with 3000 grid sandpaper again. You have to do this very lightly because you risk sanding through the primer and down to the plastic, and you'd have to re-primer it. However this is worth the risk. micro-filler primer is not like surfacer or surfacing primer, it's not smooth, but rough. This is the micro-filler, the actual tiny particles that are working to bond into those micro-grooves we made previously.

"Wet" sanding is the way to go here, which is where you dip the sanding paper (or sponge) in some water before use, allowing you to wet the surface as you go. This allows you to control the particulates that come off from sanding, so that you don't breathe it in. It also helps with dust in general. Either way, you'll end up with a very smooth surface which is perfect for paint. These steps give us a strong foundation on top of which the rest of the finish is built, so it's worth taking time here.

A tiny wire for a tiny mirror.

I used a new trick here as well, I've been reading about it and finally tried it for myself - pinning the mirrors. It's always a frustrating item to try and glue the side mirrors on. You don't want to glue them on before you paint because it makes painting less than ideal. But doing it after you paint is risky because you could damage the finish. Traditionally, you put some glue on them and then hold them and try not a slip or move until the glue has grabbed onto the body, least you create a glue smudge on your paintwork.

Pinning is where you take a small piece of very thin wire, like an old guitar string (I have plenty of these!) and then use a very small drill called a "pin-vise". It's actually called a pin vise because you use the mechanical "vise" action of the handle to hold something small like a pin. This is intended for jewelry making. But you can also hold a very small (2 mm in my case) drill bit in it and drill a teeny tiny hole in say, the door mirror of a plastic car!

Once you've made your hole you just slot the wire in with some super glue. Then you find where you're going to place the door mirror and drill another hole to use later. Simple trick that saves loads of stress later!

Primer done, the body was now ready for paint. I used ProScale Paint's "Porsche Clematis Purple" which is automotive grade paint that is color coded to the official Porsche Clematis Purple specifications. In short, this is a real factory color that you can get your Porsche painted in.

ProScale paints have quickly become my favorite. They're very forgiving, pre-thinned, and they're made by a nice couple over in the UK. It's just hard to get them right now in the US because of shipping. But I'm a believer in their products. Similarly Splash Paints is based out of Oregon and therefore easier and faster to get, and they certainly make a great product. ProScale for me is just what I prefer, even if my access to it is limited.

I'll let the results speak for themselves here:

After a few coats, the color builds up nicely. I've added a couple decals here and am getting ready to put on the clear coat.

This is a fantastic color and I'm really happy with how it turned out. This is after the paint has dried for a couple days. ProScale says to use about 6 to 8 coats to really build up the color. I think I used five. Maybe four. Because the paint is pre-thinned quite a bit it does take more for the color to build up, but after coat four I find I'm not able to see much difference. I should probably try the full eight one day, just to see.

Before putting on the clear coat I used Tamia panel liner to color the panel groves. This really adds a lot to a paint job; gives some contrast and some realism.

Then it was ready to clear coat. I used ProScale 2K on this one. It's called 2K because it's a 2 component clear coat meaning you have the clear gloss, but you have to mix in some activator for it to work.

For ProScale it's a 2:1 clear to hardener/activator mix. So for example if you use 5ml of clear you'll mix in 2.5ml of activator. Then, after that mix, you mix in another 5% of thinner. So if you've got 7.5 total after you mix then you'll want to measure out about 0.3 ml of thinner. It doesn't have to be perfect, the clear:activator ratio is what's most important. Once your mixed up you paint a first coat that's medium wet, which means don't mist it but don't dump it on. Then you'll wait five minutes and do it again. This allows the clear coat to become extremely sticky. Like honey or molasses sticky. Then you take whatever's left in your airbrush and thin it out about 5% more and go in for the kill. Another plug for ProScale, you can push the clear really hard. If it starts to wrinkle up (orange peel) just put some more on and let it self level. This is really, really great stuff.

It's also very, very toxic. When I use it I have my paint booth fan on maximum and vent it outside. I typically use a charcoal filter but not with this stuff, it's just too risky. Maximum venting outside, I also use a full respirator mask. These are about $30 to $50 bucks and will keep you from getting cancer. Seriously.

Finally I protect any exposed skin, that means nitrate gloves and sleeve protectors unless I'm wearing long sleeves. I don't want this stuff in my lungs or on my body. Once I'm finished I leave the fan venting and leave the room for a couple hours. I'll leave the house completely if I can and take the cat with me.

I do not use this crap around the kids or other people. Maybe I'm being overly cautious but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

So is the juice worth the squeeze? I think so.

Once the 2K clear had dried, I needed to mask off the window panels for paining. In the past I've used large pieces of tape and a very sharp hobby knife to cut around the panel lines. I couldn't do that on this car because the panel lines are... well weird. You'll see, because I'll show you.

My way was always kind of a cheat anyway, and most of the folks I follow on the socials say that the best way is to use various strands of 1mm, 2mm and 3mm tape to outline and then using the big tape to just cover up the car. This method is very tedious, and it's a skill so the more you do it the faster you get.

I was certainly not having any luck with my "quick" method and risking damaging the car, so I gave it a shot. After a couple of hours, I had a good start.

I still had to do the top of the hood and a couple other places, but you get the idea of what's going on here. After this I wrapped the whole car so that I could paint it the "weatherstripping" and window frames without getting any on the actual paint. This is always a high stress item because you don't know if you did a good job with the tape until you take it off!

Luck or skill? I claim luck.

There's a drip rail the runs up the A-Piller of the car and then all the way back to the trunk, it's not part of the door or windows, so it has to stay the color of the body, this made getting the tape correct difficult, but with a lot of patience and a bit of luck everything came out pretty good.

The Department of the Interior

As I talked about earlier, the interior of the GT2 is pretty spartan. The door panels, for example, are attached directly to the sheet metal, and there's no back seats. This kit comes with some parts from the racing version, so I could have put in some things like fire extinguishers on the passenger side.

However, I wanted this to represent the road car fairly well, so I opted to put in the passenger seat after all. There's also a racing gear shift or the regular road going version one, so I used the road one. However, I couldn't help myself and went for the racing steering wheel. I love the three spoke wheels in these types of cars.

I used my pin vice to drill out the holes in the steering wheel, which I thought was pretty cool.

I painted the exposed body panels the same color as the body, just with no clear coat. I would have done these in a bare metal color but the kit shows that they exposed rear panel (where the back seats should be is to be painted the body color, so I figured I'd continue that theme throughout the interior.

I painted the door panels black, masked them up with was quite a bit easier to do than the windows, and painted them with the same paint as the body.

I think the results look pretty good, I did add a bit more details but I didn't take and pictures of it, but there wasn't a lot there anyway.

The dashboard was a similar affair, nothing really exciting happening, just some silver details, and the decals for the gauges.

The car's interior has the roll cage in it, which illustrates just how much of a racing car this thing really is. I found some rubber "tubing" that I cut down to size and put on some of the roll cage bars to make it look like the foam padding you'd normally see in this situation. I think I'll continue to do so when building roll cages. Everything went together quickly, and then it was time to work on the Chassis.

Chassis

There no "engine" in the kit, just the moulding on the bottom of the chassis, the exhaust, the suspension and the wheels.

For the wheels, I left the chrome in place and painted the inner wheel with a gold marker from Gaahleri. Everything else was painted with various Vallejo paints with a brush.

I also did some heat staining on the exhaust.

It's the Final Assembly

After finishing up the final touch-ups and putting in the glass, it was time to put the body onto the car. But first, we had to put the mirrors on!

The pinning really helped with this, as you can see having the pre-drilled guide hole and a little piece of metal guitar string really helped getting this done.

Putting the body on is always kind of stressful to me. You often have to bend some items that probably shouldn't be bent, and you risk knocking off pieces or causing scratches. Paul, the guy behind ProScale Paints knocked out the windows when he did this kit last year, causing all kinds of problems and had to completely re-do the windows. Luckily I didn't have that happen to me.

It's go time.

And that was that. Great kit to build, I really enjoyed doing this one. Not sue what's next. There's a group build in mid February, so I will likely wait for that so I can join in. But for now, the Gallery!