Lotus C01 Street Bike

The Lotus C01 is a concept motorcycle revealed in 2014, manufactured by Kodewa under license from Lotus. The C01 is a 1195cc 75deg V-twin producing 200hp (150kw)

I decided to model the C01 out of the box, with no modifications to the bike at all, the model consists of white metal and resin parts, with rubber tyres.

The kit, I purchased from a good friend a few years ago. It is a rare and hard to find kit. I am still trying to track down the Martini and Lotus green versions of this bike.

Scale               1:12

Brand              Studio 27

Model             Lotus C01

Paints Used     Primers – Mr Hobby Black

                        Tamiya LP paints

            Tamiya Gloss Black spray paint.

            Gravity Europe 2K gloss

Tamiya’s LP range of paints were used throughout due to their rapid drying time, and good choice of colours.

The model was built in small sub-assemblies as this is the method I am used to with building cars and bikes, I also find this a much easier way to paint items and then bring them together. The instructions were followed pretty much as seen in the instructions, with careful attention placed on when to paint items to be able to move onto and complete the next stage.

Painting, primers used were straight from the Mr Hobby cans. All other colours were sprayed straight from the Tamiya spray can, light dust coats building up to a full wet coat. The Gloss coat was sprayed with my Iwata airbrush, using a 0.35mm needle setup at around 25psi. Some detail painting was done with a small OO size paint brush.

The kit wound up taking me about three months to build, as the gloss black paint was left for a week before a careful finish polish was applied. The kit comes with two sets of decals which was extremely handy to get a perfect fitment I needed to use both sets. I used Micro Set and Micro Sol to apply the decals slowly working a decal at a time, while they are a simple set of decals on the bike the carbon fibre decals took a week to apply, due to getting them perfect and flat. Once the decals had dried for a week, a layer of Gravity 2K clear was applied. Luckily the clear layed down so perfectly no polishing was required.

In conclusion the Studio 27 Lotus C01 is a fun build, but I would not suggest  this for a beginner builder, as some of the white metal parts will need work to straighten. Care is needed in doing this.