How do you best display a legend? Specifically, how best to display the BMW 850i model by Road Legends? Hmmm.
I bought this model from an Ebay auction at the same time I got the Bburago Ferrari 550. I'm glad I got it -- it adds another brand name to my collection, one that doesn't offer many cars of interest to me.
Obviously, this was my first Road Legends car (actually Yat Ming company, from China, who also market the Road Tough brand). I had read that they weren't up to the standard set by Maisto, much less Bburago, so my expectations weren't too high. Let's look closer and see what I got.
The real BMW 850i, now no longer imported to the USA, was an impressive example of conspicuous consumption: with its 5-liter V-12 it burned a lot of fuel to produce tremendous amounts of power, but it was too large and heavy to perform like a true sports car. So BMW gave it a couple tiny back seats and called it a sport coupe -- it became the spiritual successor to the 633CSi. It was a fine specimen of excessive German engineering, and the high price and low practicality made it an eventual sales failure. Still, practicality isn't what dream cars are about, is it?
To my eye the styling was missing something: for about $80,000, I'd want a car that didn't look like an oversized 1988 Toyota Supra. It wasn't bad, but it lacked distinction. It didn't make my nerve endings fire.
Well, the Road Legends model of the 850i doesn't make them fire, either. The shape isn't badly executed, but the fit and finish are second-rate. The green metallic paint is shiny, but lacks the depth and polish of even a Maisto.
The interior is one if this car's worst sins: most of it, including the seats, grows up from the floor in a single monochromatic extrusion. The stickers depicting the gauges and the console controls are misaligned. The doors open easily and smoothly -- but let's leave them closed; I don't want to show that interior too easily.
Lifting the hood, we find a rather sparsely detailed engine -- but good enough for the price point. We notice that the headlight covers remained down, so with a thumbnail we can pry them up...aauughghh! The pop-up headlights, rather than having clear lenses, only have really ugly stickers to represent them. The taillights and turn signals seem off-color -- yellow, where they should be amber -- but at least they have lenses.
We'll leave the headlights down. In fact, we'll leave the hood down, too, because it lacks a prop rod, and it won't wedge open.
The trunk lid does wedge open, revealing a creditable spare tire, and no division between the trunk and the inner surfaces of the back seats. Hmm. I think BMW paid a little more attention to the details. Let's close the trunk.
The front tires turn easily enough, and retain the angle you set them. Unfortunately, the wheels look rather cheap for a car of this calibre, and the tires themselves look more like plastic than rubber. In their favor, you can read the brand (Dunlop) and other specific information on them -- including the fine print giving their size.
Turning the car over -- wonder of wonders! This car has some of the best undercarriage detail to date, easily exceeding that of many Maistos and Bburagos. Your eyes can effortlessly trace the exhaust path from the manifolds, on the engine's underside, through the catalytic converters, and along the chassis to the tailpipes -- the whole path is painted a light metallic grey, contrasting nicely with the rest of the underside.
That makes it simple, doesn't it?
How best to display this car? Upside down, on its roof.
To sum it up:
Strengths: Detailed underside.
Weaknesses: Vile interior, imperfect exterior, no way to prop the hood open, and pop-up headlights that should have been left as a molded line on the hood.
Overall: Find another 850i, maybe Maisto's or Revell's, if you must have one. This makes me glad I didn't pay retail for it.
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