The History

After Porsche's Overall wins at the 1970 & 1971 LeMans 24 hrs race which was run on the Circuit de la Sarthe with their factory iconic 917k cars. They refocused their goals to only race cars that looked like their current model street cars. So their new generation of race cars would resemble at least to a layman, their 911 series.

1st up was their Carrera RSR cars with normally aspirated engines. By the 1976 season they replaced the Carreras with new Group 4 & 5 turbo engined cars based on the 911 using a turbo charged engine. The group 4 cars became the known as the 934 series, while the Group 5 cars became the 935 series. With the new rule changes, the Group 5 cars would once again contest for the overall FIA Endurance Championship, so that's what Porsche focused on as their #1 factory priority.

Interestingly, the Group 4 934s was very similar spec wise to the street 911 Turbo, and were sold to any privateer since there was no factory team effort. The Group 5 rules allowed vastly more modifications. A totally different suspension with coil springs, adjustable ABS bars, vented disc brakes, a fully designed racing chassis, and the list just goes on. Both car series featured their massive single KKK turbo charger system.

Porsche sold off the previous year's factory team cars to privateers as well as new customer cars using the same last year's specifications.The new team cars naturally were always one step ahead. One such team was The Kremer Brother's Racing Team based in Germany, who had extremely close ties to Porsche. The Kremer Brothers wanted a car equal to the factory cars, so they decided to do some modifications on their own to achieve that goal.

For the 1976 season they raced their modified 935 K1. For 1977 they took their customer 935 and modified it into the 935 K2, which was truly on equal footing with the factory cars, of which BeeMax has produced a1/24 scale model of it.

For the 1979 season Kremer modified their customer car in to the 935 K3 model which competed against the Porsche factory 935-79s (more commonly referred to as just 935's), and were once again the equal to Porsche, and even bettered Porsche by winning the overall Group 5 title at LeMans in the pouring rain.

There's been quite a lot of discussion about Spot Models having both Nunu and Beemax issuing 1/24 scale 935 K3s. And honestly, it was driving me crazy too. The answer to that question is yes and no. They're both releasing 1979 935's, and both are using common parts from the Beemax 935 K2 molds. The NuNu kit is indeed the modified Kremer 935 K3 that won at LemMans, while the Beemax kit looks to be a factory 935-79 fromm that year's LeMans race as well.

The Kit

There are 3 sprues (almost) of "Plexi glass", one large sprue of very clear plastic that includes both the front, rear, & side windows, & attached to it is a smaller spure tree with the glass for the rear window and front light lenses. But that small sprue's glass is for the Beemax K2. So there is a separate 3rd sprue tree with the correct rear window and the glass lenses for the lights on the correctly modified front clip. The rubber molding is engraved in a frost/matt to make painting that much easier.

There are two large white sprues. The 1st one contains the roll cage for the drivers compartment, the Beemax K2 1 pc. fenders, and it's rear deck and wing. The 2nd white sprue contains the correct 2 pc rear fenders, and the correct rear deck and wing. I guess it's far cheaper to just include the extra sprue trees for the roll cage, then have a new mold made for just the roll cage.

The kit does have a beautifully molded 1 piece main body shell with quite a lot of slight molding seams as the front clip is very intricate in shape and scope. So there has to have been several mold sections used in the molding process. From a careful visual inspection, they got the top of the rear deck as close to perfect as we could expect. The two piece fender plus the intake screening does need some very careful sanding and loving care to get a really good fit as the real car had. Also, every car I've seen pictures of has an adjustable small vertical winglet/Gurney Flap on each side from the outside edge of the rear of the fender to where the body and rear wings joins the end of the rear clip. There's one on each side, and neither is present in the kit.

As with Beemax's K2 release, this kit is basically a detailed curbside kit. There is no full engine/transmission, nor complete suspension. But as you can see in the instructions the bottoms of each are separate highly detailed parts that fit perfectly since these are from the Beemax molds of their 935 K2.

The kit is comprised of 12 sprue trees. 4 are black, 3 including the body are white, 1 very small chrome sprue, 1 bag of tires, two clear sprues, and the basic body shell. All are individually bagged and sealed.

Decal Sheets

There are two decal sheets which have been designed and printed in house as they just have the NuNu name on them. The 1st sheet has all the color decals for the body markings, while the 2nd decal sheet has all the sponsor logos, as well as decals for all the Plexi Glass rubber seals. I can't wait to actually try them out as they're not only certainly a huge time saver, but all the edges will be sharp and straight. The colors matched up perfectly to my references, and the registration is just dead on.

As with many of the kits issued by Beemax, Platz, NuNu, & even now Tamiya, there is a detail up kit produced at the same time but sold separately, and they generally go for $24 each. I was completely taken by surprise that NuNu included one with the kit for review. The detail kit contains a PE sheet with all the buckles, latches for the 6 way harness, and most of the grills, and the various hold down latches. A piece of colored ribbon is included to make the belts from, but you have to cut each one separately.

The Instructions

The instructions is just one long folded piece of paper creating 10 pages. 3 1/2 pages contains the history of the car, all the various sprues, a Black & White decaling 5 view drawing, & a 1/2 page of all the needed color paints for 3 different brands. There are inserts throughout the various steps for detail painting, and/or detailed assemblies such at the brakes & the instrument panel. Since the instructions that were included in my advance release kit are all in Chinese, I really can't tell exactly what information they are relaying to the builder by written word, but the detail drawings are excellent.

One issue that I've come across while examining the instructions is that for some reason in step #13 they show the rear glass: N1 being placed into position from the inside, while in step #15 which is all the major glass installations, they're showing N1 being glued into position from the outside. Inspecting the body shell, there is indeed recessed lips for the the rear glass in both locations, but one N1 part. Other then that, the instructions are well done and follow a very logical build progression.

All the pictures of the model, instructions, and decal sheets have been downloaded from the Spot Model Site.

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