Italeri 1/12 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Monza Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

In 1931, Alfa Romeo introduced a new racing car powered by the supercharged 8C (eight cylinder) 2300 (2.3 liter) engine that drove the car to numerous victories. The car was originally designed for two people - driver and mechanic - before race rules eliminated the need for an onboard mechanic. The type very competitive on the track, but Alfa produced 188 of these cars, a few for the track, the rest for privately owned roadsters. The 8C 2300 would power the Alfa Romeo racer during the 1931-35 seasons before being upgraded to the 8C 2900 engine for the 1936-41 seasons.

Here's an interesting new release from Italeri, the Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Monza in 1/12 scale. You'll recall that Italeri released another Alfa Romeo racer in October with reissued/reboxed Protar 1/12 Alfa Romeo 179/179C kit. Unlike the 179, this kit is all new-tool of the iconic racer from Italy's racing heritage. Molded in styrene, this kit is presented on ten parts trees: two in red, three in silver, three in black, one chromed, and one in clear (duplicate trees not shown). This kit also includes a fret of photo-etched parts, vinyl tubing, wire, a bag of tiny screws, and four rubber (vinyl) tires.

The kit nicely captures the details of the early suspension system, and if you want to have a little sympathy for the driver, check out the YouTube videos of the Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 driving as I found myself cringing each time the car hit a bump.

Like the suspension, the engine is very nicely detailed, and you can admire your work with the positionable hood. Italeri provides tubing to replicate the ignition wiring as well as some plumbing. There is even rope (thread) to wrap the exhaust duct to help protect the car's occupants from burning their hands should they reach out the left side of the vehicle.

The kit offers some nice details and features:

• Detailed chassis
• Articulating suspension
• Detailed drive train
• Detailed supercharged engine with ignition wiring and plumbing
• Positionable hood panels
• Steerable front wheels
• Brakes have brake lines
• Instrument panel has wiring/tubing connections to their sources
• Four options for exhaust duct heat shielding
• Removable upper body panels to reveal all of the interior details
• Optional paint masks for race 28

This is a nicely designed kit that offers some nice details without over-engineering. The only drawbacks are as follows:

• For a kit at this price, I would expect more options like the additional running boards, headlights/tail light of the roadster version
• The instructions are very vague on painting this kit. Some of the smaller details have paint call-outs but you won't see any paint instructions (for example) for the engine block, chassis, drive train, body, etc. It is almost like Italeri wants us to build this kit with minimal painting using the colored parts as provided. I've seen photos from Italeri's Twitter feed that show photos of this kit in various stages of completion, and indeed it appears they're leaving the plastic bare other than the call-outs in the instructions.
• If you do opt for the bare plastic concept, note that in my example, the silver parts have swirls of different color silver/gray running through the parts. Should you pose the hood open, you'll need to deal with visible ejector pin marks on the inside surfaces of those hood panels.

Whatever your interests, Italeri has produced another nice kit that will provide you with some serious fun.

Here is a list of paints Italeri identifies for use with this kit (minus the Italeri colors):

Thanks to MRC for the review sample.