The late 1920's through the 1930's was the era of the art deco movement. Its effects were readily apparent in architecture, furniture. and automotive design. The Bugatti T-50 epitomizes this design ethic with its clean flowing lines and mechanical excellence. Heller has done a wonderful job on this kit and if you appreciate classic automobiles, this is definitely one you'll need to add to your collection. Though I've built many of Heller's fine 1/72nd aircraft kits, this is the first of their cars that I've tried and I was not disappointed. To be sure, the tooling for this kit has been around for about 45 years and the finish on the body panels will require some sanding and polishing before you commit to paint. That said, details are crisp and parts fits are excellent. The instructions are well illustrated and I pretty much followed them, but saved the fiddly parts such as the firewall braces until final assembly. The engine is beautifully rendered and I took a little extra time detailing it with plug wires, etc. This is a great kit to improve your building skills on and I drew from virtually everything I know to build my T-50. I took my time and built it as a series of sub-assemblies. The Bugatti T-50 was truly Art On Wheels and this lovely Heller kit definitely does it justice!

Some of my favorite cars are the pre WWII luxury cars. The problem is unless you want to pay the high price on Ebay for out of production kit there aren’t very many available. This kit is one of the few available. The kit is very detailed with over 150 pieces. The parts are well detailed with very little flash to clear up. Some parts are very delicate and can break easily when removing them from the frame. The instructions are clear with painting details on each step. There are only 4 small decals, but I used the Micro system to install them with no problems. There are a few problems with this kit. First off, most of the parts are butt joined together. Care has to be taken as they can break off easily. On the engine block there are 4 Bugatti logo that have to be painted. The lettering is very difficult to paint without painting the background. Decals would have been a better choice here. Because this model is from a French company the painting instructions call out Humbrol paints, which are hard to find in this country. I went online and used cross references charts to find matching colors from other manufacturers. There is one mistake in the instructions. On the last step the instructions call out part 97, which is a different part used in step 19. Luckily because this was the last step the part is easy to find. Because of the many parts and the manufacturers use of butt joints I would not recommend this kit to beginners or anyone with limited experience. However if this model is a nice addition to anyone who loves these kind of cars like I do.