Jaegermeister. Aaaah, Jaegermeister, tastes foul, hurts heads, add it to beer or Red Bull and you make the utterly hideous Jagerbomb. Add it to motorsport and you make one of the most iconic liveries to ever have graced a race track. Sure, it tastes like piss, but it sure is purdy on a race car!
So we've covered iconic liveries, what about iconic races? The Monte Carlo Rally has got to be up there as one of the most famous races around. Back in the seventies the first objective of the Rally was actually getting to Monte Carlo! The 1973 edition was like automotive pornography for us strange folk who like old cars, a random selection of entrants:
Alpine A110
Ford Escort RS1600
Lancia Fulvia Coupé
Datsun 240Z
BMW 2002
And it's this last one we're interested today. Wolfgang Stiller drove #255 on the Monte Carlo Rally in Group 2. He's listed as retired, and my half-arsed research hasn't thus far uncovered what the reason for retirement was, mechanical, excursion off road or, in keeping with the livery, collision with wildlife. What I do know is that Auto Art decided to commemorate this particular entrant with a 1/18 rendition.
Design & Accuracy: 9/10
Top shelf, as usual Auto Art delivers the goods. Sometimes I get the feeling that they hide their light under a bushel on road cars because there's less to see. However on a race car you can really see how much attention to detail they have. All of those sponsor decals are rendered in painfully accurate detail. One tiny detail which bothers me, however it might just be me is the wire holding up the mud flaps, it looks way out of scale in terms of sizing, but it's a small detail.
Fit and Finish: 10/10
I wish I could pull the model up on something, but I can't. It's absolutely brilliant. Auto Art has gone to every effort to render things in excruciating detail. Old BMWs are funny old things, when you open the bonnet (oh ok, hood) on a real one, it pops forward and then you lift and open, well guess what, that's exactly what happens on the model too. Beyond that, panel gaps are perfect, probably better than real life. The paint is amazing.
Features: 8/10
Four opening panels, your usual fare, doors, hood and boot (oh come on, you've figured out what I'm talking about by now). The details of the interior, the boot and underbonnet areas are all detailed in such a manner that you could display the model with all of these panels open and people would be amazed.
Value: 7/10
€150 buys you a little slice of Bavarian rally history (even though the history itself is a bit crap). Is that a lot? Well it's definitely not cheap, granted. But at the same time, we're talking real quality and detail here. Other Auto Art racing cars are cheaper and offer the same level of detail, true, but if you've got to have a Jaegermeister BMW it's either this, an E30 M3 or a 635CSi (they're coming soon).
Rarity: 9/10
US eBay? Nada. European pages? One. So that's pretty damn rare if you ask me! Another variant from the 1972 TAP Rally which is the same, barring wheels and colour is readily available, but this specific one is a bit thin on the ground.
Total: 43/50
Not bad, not bad at all. Looking back at my other reviews I would say that Auto Art models tend to fall into this range of scores most of the time. I guess that makes for pretty boring reading, but you'll have to forgive my self-indulgence.
One tiny detail I'd like to leave you with, back in the seventies rallying wasn't rallying without a Halda Tripmaster or a Twinmaster, here's a picture.
Look at the dash on the model...
