Go Brick Racing with the Nifeliz R18 Race Car Kit

When I was a kid, I collected small, die-cast Matchbox cars. Matchbox cars were fun, durable toys--three-inch cars and trucks of a wide variety of colors and shapes that were ready for play. Now that I'm older, my tastes in scale-sized car replicas have become more ambitious, making them the perfect fit for Nifeliz's 1:10 scale R18 race car kit. Nifeliz sent me a kit to assemble, and here's my review of this impressive build.

Nifeliz has established a great reputation for ambitious brick car replica kits, and the R18 kit ably lives up to that standard. This kit consists of 1,685 pieces (including rubber tires for the wheels), and the finished car is 19 inches long and 9 inches wide. Below are pictures of the R18 box, which has a front graphic that's designed to look like the hood of an R18 car.

The instruction manual is printed on glossy paper and features 162 pages of instructions that line up with the numbered bags which contain the parts. The instructions are clear and easy to follow, but what really stands out to me about the manual is how the first few pages discuss the creative process behind the creation of this kit. The text is in both English and German.

It took me several hours to complete this build. I took some pictures as I was constructing it so you can see the frame and some of the interior parts that are crucial to the finished car. 

Below are pictures of the completed R18 race car. Plenty of decals are provided, but I only used a few of them. I'm still amazed with the build's details and features as they are, so I kept the decals to a minimum.

Nifeliz's designers of the R18 race car kit wanted to provide a wide selection of features to add to the immersion and playability of the build, and they succeeded. The steering wheel can be turned to move the car's front wheels, and the pistons in the car's V4 engine move whenever the rear wheels move.

 

The R18 race car kit is for an advanced builder, and it requires a lot of patience and an ability to handle small parts. Furthermore, most of the pieces in this kit fit together tightly, so disassembling parts of the car to fix an error is tricky to do. I ran into this problem when assembling a set of gears that fit into the right side of the car. When these gears are properly assembled, a knob can be twisted to open the doors to the driver's seat and to crank open the rear hood. I couldn't get these gears to fit together properly so this feature doesn't work in my build, but I can still manually open these compartments anyway.

Nifeliz's R18 race car kit is perfect for car enthusiasts and brick fans who enjoy assembling complex, mechanical builds. Click here to purchase the R18 race car kit and click here to see other Nifeliz kits that are available on Amazon. You can get 5% off of your R18 purchase by using the code 05CDXR18. You can also check out the Nifeliz blog and the Nifeliz YouTube channel for more information about current and upcoming Nifeliz brick kits.

Below is a picture I took of my R18 race car build next to an augmented reality 3D model I made of the build using Polycam and Adobe Aero. Just download Adobe Aero onto your smartphone or tablet, scan the QR code under the picture, and then find a solid horizontal surface where you can place the virtual R18 model.