The kit that has its own legend - Rosso 1/8th Ferrari 643

[The Hypno-Toad]

In the dim, dark days before the internet rumours, still were spread and thus was born the legend of Rosso Models.

Run by the son-in-law of the owner of Fujimi, they started off in about 1990 making fairly run of the mill 1/24th racing car models, GTRs and the like. Generally thought of as not bad quality (just below Tamiya and Hasegawa.) they then got adventurous and bought a licence from Ferrari. A couple of normal Ferrari's followed and then they got really adventurous and some would say ever so slightly bonkers.

They released a 1/8th transkit Ferrari 643 Prost/Alesi 1991 F1 car....

Its a truly beautiful thing with a hand finished metal body, three different types of decals and very similar build quality to the Tamiya 1/12th cars.

However...
The Ferrari 643 was a disaster (Prost described it as a truck and was fired for his comment) and the model was never going to be a huge sales success, which at £300.00 a copy (in 1992!) was going to be a bit of an issue reference cashflow. With this in mind, the owner burned down the factory, all of the stock was destroyed and the company went bankrupt.
The rumour side of this was that he actually drove his own Ferrari into the warehouse and set the fire from there. How true this is, who knows?

But very few of them escaped into the wild. In America and Japan it came out in a colour box with Marlboro stickers while in Europe it came out in a white box. Even rarer was the Upgrade kit with a driver figure and a metal engine block.

Well look what landed on The Toads lilypad yesterday....







What to do, what to do....

Edited by The Hypno-Toad on Wednesday 4th February 17:47

[Skii]

[fatboy69]

Skii said:

So do I.

However. I googled the kit & saw how much they were selling for!!!!!

[The Hypno-Toad]

Well chaps, the news might be good.

I'm currently trying to place it with a couple of dealers at the moment and if the next few offers I get are as pathetic as the first, it will be coming to a well-known auction site near you by the weekend.

Time to break open the piggy bank?

[ecsrobin]

The Hypno-Toad said:

Well chaps, the news might be good.

I'm currently trying to place it with a couple of dealers at the moment and if the next few offers I get are as pathetic as the first, it will be coming to a well-known auction site near you by the weekend.

Time to break open the piggy bank?

Bonhams had one for auction in 2006. https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/14426/lot/144/ They also have a sale coming up at Goodwood in March if you were looking to sell through that method.

[The Hypno-Toad]

Thanks for that, will have to investigate that route further too.

[vx220]

The Hypno-Toad said:

Thanks for that, will have to investigate that route further too.

BUILD IT!!! It will look amazing, unless you haven't got the skills (I haven't)

Why are you using Ray Luxury Yatch's photobucket?

[The Hypno-Toad]

vx220 said:

The Hypno-Toad said:

Thanks for that, will have to investigate that route further too.

BUILD IT!!! It will look amazing, unless you haven't got the skills (I haven't)

Why are you using Ray Luxury Yatch's photobucket?

When the internet was young and virgin, I used the name ray_luxury_yacht ("but its pronounced Throat Whobbler Mangrove.) on some other forums so maybe he nicked the name from me.
Although I have seen it on virtually every other forum that I visit, so I guess there are still a lot of Python fans out there.

With regard to building, I wish. I used to do F1 cars, in fact I have a number of 1/20th Tamiyas gradually falling to bits behind me but those days are long gone. I have no longer got the patience and skills to give something as rare as this car a proper job of construction.

Besides, I'm moving this one for someone else and basically he needs the cash flow!!

[Halmyre]

I've heard that, if it's a rare kit of any description, building it will immediately wipe out most if not all value it has?

[dr_gn]

To my eyes, for such a large scale kit it looks pretty crude tbh, assuming these pics are the same model (and apparently with an additional detail set):



http://www.scaleautoworks.com/643_photos.html

The best model of a 6-series Ferrari F1 has to be the Tamiya 1:12 kit for about £100. Even built OOB it looks far better than the Rosso version IMO

[72twink]

Thank god I wasn't the only one thinking that GN Maybe that's why he supposedly torched the place, after spening all that time only for Tamiya to do a better job for a fraction of the cost!

[dr_gn]

72twink said:

Thank god I wasn't the only one thinking that GN Maybe that's why he supposedly torched the place, after spening all that time only for Tamiya to do a better job for a fraction of the cost!

The value of a kit doesn't necessarily reflect its quality. There was a rare 1:12 Frog Bloodhound missile that went for about £1,600 on EBay not so long ago IIRC. Fine for a collector of unbuilt kits, but by no means an outstandingly good model.

[The Hypno-Toad]

Skii said:

Well the good news is you may well be able to have.

Having been jerked around by some German model dealer tosspot for a couple of weeks before he decided he didn't want it, it will be appearing on eBay this Sunday.

As has been mentioned earlier, some of the prices that have been seen on the internet are far too high for what the car is really worth. As far as I can discover none have actually been sold for four figures, just people thinking that's what they should be worth.

Therefore I will be pricing it with far more realistic expectations.

May the best man win!

[The Hypno-Toad]

[cough.]

[ferrisbueller]

You might as well post a link, chap. I can't find it via a search, or has it gone?

[dr_gn]

ferrisbueller said:

You might as well post a link, chap. I can't find it via a search, or has it gone?

Not sure if it's the same one, but I get "This listing was ended by the seller because there was an error in the listing".

IME, usually means someone made an offer less than the buy-it-now price.

[The Hypno-Toad]

Went yesterday for the 'buy it now' price, so sorry for those didn't get a bid in. Wasn't sure if the mods would delete any link as advertising/promotion.

Incredibly, with all this talk of Japanese sellers, German collectors and fancy auction houses it went to someone who lives less than five miles away from me!
If anything goes wrong t the last minute again I'll let you guys know but the money is in my account and I'll probably be running it round to him this evening.

edited to added the range of prices that I saw/was offered/estimated.

Specialist toy auction house: £150.00
Bonhams: £250.00
American dealer: £350.00
German tosspot dealer: £500.00
Toads: £???.??
One for sale on eBay now in Japan (starting bid.): £600.00
One went through eBay a few weeks ago: £620.00
Bonhams in 2006: £1200-£1500 (didn't sell.)

So if any of you see another one for sale that's the huge range that they have gone for. You can probably guess what mine went for and that seems like a fair price at the moment. It has now left the Toads pad but the good news is that it has gone to an enthusiastic 1/8 collector who is going to build it rather than let it gather dust on the shelf as an investment.

Edited by The Hypno-Toad on Tuesday 24th February 20:28

Edited by The Hypno-Toad on Tuesday 24th February 20:32

[Zuff]

I bought mine some months back. It has been built but not finished…no decals applied etc. Its been thrown together…no sanding of moulding tabs or flash etc. I plan to disassemble and build it up properly and add detail which it is crying out for. It is an impressive model though. The red body shell is gorgeous.
It's the final part of my 1/8 scale F1 collection, 5 cars (Lotus 72, McLarens M23, Mp4/4 and MP4/23 and Ferrari 643) although I now know that there is an 1/8 scale Ferrari 126 C2 from Promocom which is probably the rarest of the lot. I have not seen one for sale for years so have decided not to include it.