Finally, the Nissan R390 Roadcar is here in 1/18 scale
One of the most obscure supercars out of Japan is now on my shelf
Growing up in the late 90’s and early 00’s, I was fascinated by everything and anything that was rare, fast, and expensive. I gravitated towards super cars, exotic cars, and ultra unique concept cars. I spent hours dialing-up on AOL to download pics of these cars on to my collection of floppy disks. One of the most fascinating cars I discovered was this Nissan R390.
In case you are unfamiliar with this car, it was a homogalation special built by Nissan in order to go racing. First, they built a short tail version of the R390, finished in red. Nissan opted to go with a long tail set up, so they cut up the red car, painted it blue, and said they built a second road car to meet the requirements. For years, I thought there were two in the world, until I learned the whole story only a few years ago.
This “road car” never actually saw any public street. Nissan never intended to mass-produce it, and tucked it away in their heritage collection in Zama, Japan. Obviously, I would never have the opportunity to see this blue beauty with my own eyes. That all would change in 2019, when Nissan decided to let this car out of its cage and toured around the US for a bit, visiting sites like the Petersen Museum, Motor Trend HQ, and the Amelia Island Concours. By sheer coincidence, I already had a ticket to Amelia Island!
GT Spirit is the first manufacturer to bring the road car to 1/18 scale. Auto Art has produced the race variant for several years, but never this blue one. Hot Wheels also added the road car to their mainline recently, so it seems like everyone jumped in when the world finally got a chance to see the car outside Japan.
Honestly, I don’t have much to complain about. This is a very solid GT Spirit model that a) exists and b) didn’t break my bank to get. I’ll tell you one thing though: I am so sick and tired of cars arriving dirty directly from the factory. This car was delivered to me sealed in it’s Styrofoam case, still packed in its shipper box, and was disgusting. There was an oily residue across the entire rear wing, as well as embedded into the vents on the nose near the windshield. I don’t know if this is supposed to offer some sort of protection during shipping or if it is just sloppiness on the quality assurance department, but I don’t want to clean my models fresh out the box.
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