I discovered this model last December, and with the amount of detail and the quality level that it appeared to have, I impulse bought this ridiculously expensive toy. Merry Christmas to me.
Here’s the website, and they make it look amazing: Ixo Collection | Full Kit | Volvo 122S
Yes, it cost $900. Stupid purchase, waste of money, don’t care. It’s awesome.
The super crazy part is that it’s illuminated and has sound. If you push the brake pedal, the brake lights activate. If you open the doors, the dome light turns on. It has authentic idle and horn sounds somehow. I haven’t got that far yet.
After being almost scammed by an ebay vendor who claimed to have it in stock and also claimed to ship it, but was lying about both, I finally ordered it directly from the manufacturer who shipped it free to the states.
The box is a monster:
and they pack it with the first few components visible for a very exciting presentation. Everything else is packed in plain white boxes, in similar blister packs. The box of screws is in the car body.
The manual gives about 2 pages of 122 facts and history, and then gets into a purely pictorial set of instructions. They are not as good as Lego instructions and have several errors, some of which have been corrected by pages inserted loose in the appropriate location.
Look at the detail! There’s a little valve stem!
they give you 32 sizes of screws, and a little bin sorter that only has 28 compartments. Thanks guys.
I basically took the baggies that had the smallest numbers of screws and set them aside, and populated the boxes with the rest. Designated alphabetically, with a P for plastic or M for metal suffix. That’s right, a significant portion of the parts in this model are made of die cast metal. Including most of the engine and body.
The parts are grouped by instruction. I have learned that the instructions don’t follow any particular logic and leave you with lots of subassemblies to set aside for later, including loose parts and screws that aren’t used until you join the subassembly to the main model.
They do include this nice little screwdriver. Nothing in this model is intended to be glued, it’s either snap fit or screw.
A lot of the joints are keyed like this so the parts don’t rotate as you screw them together, and so you know how they are intended to be oriented.
Grille and bumper finished. Why these are first I don’t know. Other than they are pretty and make you feel like it’s gonna look awesome.
Next is the hood. Keeping in mind that this all looks incredibly realistic, as in it really looks like how the car is built.
There’s even a nut that you will never see again on the back of the hood latch.
It has an accurate looking latch and safety catch.
The latch spring and retainer are functional!
Hood trim installed. The VOLVO lettering is raised up and pre-painted, I can’t tell if the thickness is a decal or if it’s cast in to the metal. Either way it prevented me from wanting to do a color change on this model.
Hood fully assembled.
Inside of a hubcap. It’s just a press fit into the wheel.
But man does it look good.
This is two pieces. This is the shock tower and the top bushing of the shock absorber. It looks like the real thing.
Hit a 20 picture post limit. Continues with another post below.