The Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R has always been a dream car of mine. Now, if you are also a car enthusiast that love these cars, you would know that the R34 is a car that is much better modified than left stock and original, well, unless you are talking about a Z-Tune or Nismo Omori Factory's Clubman Race Spec cars.

Mine's R34 is one of the most iconic modified R34s out there

Top Secret's R34 in its iconic gold shade is yet another famous example of a tuned R34

Many tuning shops have built their own vision of what an R34 should be, a few famous examples include the ones built by Mine's, Signal Auto, Top Secret and others. But my favourite has got to be Matchless Crowd Racing (MCR)'s R34.

The MCR R34 is famous for its appearance on Hot Version, and its record run on Japan's C1 Expressway, it is also one of my favourite R34s

Those who are familiar with Hot Version and its Touge runs would be familiar with this iconic red R34, dubbed the Maou (Demon King) GTR, the MCR R34 was a formidable force on the winding Gunsai Touge with Keiichi Tsuchiya behind its wheel. Some might even know that the MCR R34 holds the record on Japan's C1 expressway; it was even featured in the Tokyo Xtreme Racer series of video games! A little known fact is that MCR actually built several of these GTRs - despite what it looks like, it wasn't just one car achieving all these ridiculous feats. But that isn't important, today's topic is about my own MCR R34! Well, a 1/64 scale version...

The Super Taikyu R34s had the same bumpers as the MCR R34 in my favourite specification, you can imagine my excitement when I saw that Inno64 has decided to launch the Falken car!

My favourite configuration of the MCR R34 comes with the front bumper that is almost identical to the one on the Super Taikyu race car, so when Inno64 released the model of the Falken Super Taikyu R34, I immediately recognised it and proceeded to get hold of the model car, with plans to customise it into the MCR R34 that I love.

With the paint stripped off, I could cover up all the unwanted holes and indentations with putty

The indentation left by the removal of the rear speed refueling drybreak connectors has been sealed off with putty as well

After a coat of primer, the final look of the car's body is starting to take shape

While the bumper made things much easier to work with (I don't have to fabricate one myself), there are little details that need to be sorted apart from respraying the car red. At the rear of the race car is a speed refueling drybreak connector, which the MCR R34 doesn't have, the roof of the race car also had an antenna (hence, a hole in the roof), and the bonnet on the race car has way too many vents as well. The solution is to use putty to cover up all these unwanted holes.

With the body details sorted, the most important thing is to spray the car red to match the MCR R34.

Here's how it looks like before I applied decals on it! 

We got lucky with the rims as the race car uses the same Enkei NT03+M rims as my favourite spec of the MCR R34, so all I needed to do was to spray the rims black.

As I did not have a source for custom waterslide decals, I had to make do with other decals that aren't the same as what's on the real car. But apart from the sticker details, I think my custom MCR R34 is a rather faithful replica of the real thing!

What do you think of it?

Hmm, making this post is igniting something in me... maybe I should find the time to start another custom diecast project...

- Zhi Xuan