As you may or may not already know, I am a huge fan of Audi blues; it doesn’t matter if it’s Nogaro, Aruba, Scuba, Moro, Sepang or Sprint. I fell in love with Sprint Blue the instant that I saw a #LoveMyS5 dressed in it. Of course, I am completely in love with the R8.
So, when I saw a Kyosho 1:18 model of an R8 5.2 coupé in Sepang Blue and the silver blade at Audi Wilsonville, I absolutely had to have it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the expendable income to pick it up that day. The next time I was there, it was no longer in the display case and it found a new home. Saying that I was disappointed would have been a huge understatement.
In the past two months, I had been scouring various websites and online shops looking for just one of them to buy. Heck, I even tried reaching out to the Audi community without any real luck. I then ran across a couple on eBay and decided to place a bid on one of them; that bid fell through. Strike one.
I found another one, but the seller would not ship outside of the United Kingdom. Thankfully, Audifans.net (@audifansdotnet) was willing to step up to help get it sent over to the US in the event that I placed the winning bid. By that time, the auction had ended and the seller said it was no longer available. Strike two.
Feeling a bit dejected, I kind of let the search for one get placed on the back burner and focused on other projects. On a whim, I searched eBay again and found one being sold for €149 before shipping. I decided to bit the bullet and bought it.
It took two weeks for the package to go through DHL and USPS, with probably various customs red tape. Those two weeks felt like an eternity, but I was super happy to see it arrive at the local post office this morning and was out for delivery. And lo and behold, it was sitting at home waiting for me!
The very first thing that I did after putting down my backpack was to open up the package and started ogling it. Oh, and I took some pictures of it.
The package itself was in nearly new condition, with a little bit of crumpling on one of the corners. Opening up the box, there wasn’t any signs of damage and everything looked prim and proper. Other than that, there was just a wee bit of dust and lint that I was easily able to dust off.
The model included a little plastic stick with a slight bend at towards the end that is used to open the doors. On the bottom of the model towards the rear, there are two buttons that pop open the rear hatch to expose the engine bay and the other pops up the spoiler.
The wait and cost was absolutely worth it. And hey, it arrived before my #WantAnR8 weekend as well!
I have posted the rest of the pictures on my personal Flickr account under the “Kyosho Sepang Blue R8 5.2 1:18 Model” set.