The Provence kit is very typical. Good resin castings with very little cleanup required. No air bubbles, and a lot of moulded-in detail. A fret of photoetch and a sheet of vacuformed "glass" - this was prior to their new policy of putting two vacuforms in the box (a much-appreciated addition).

I started the kit by cleaning it up, scrubbing away any potential mould release. It was then set aside to dry overnight.

The bottom lower image shows the cleaned-up resin. A word of caution - resin is by it's nature very brittle, and care must be taken when working with fine castings like the rollcage. One slip of a knif can result in disaster.

The next step was to primer the parts in preparation for painting. I used Testor's White Primer, as I wanted a light color as a surface because the covering colors would be white and yellow.

Provence supplies a nice set of decals, and provides a very large decal that can be used if you choose not to mask off the lower white section of the body. This would allow you to paint the whole car yellow and then utilize the decal to "paint" the sites of the car white. There is another decal to do the same for the rear of the car, which is solid black.

They also supply a black pinstripe decal if you decide to mask and paint the car the two seperate colors. This is what I decided to do. I started off by coating the model with Tamiya Racing White. After several coats the car was set aside to cure for a while prior to masking.

Meanwhile, the interior was given a coat of semi-gloss black, then detail was picked out using various shades of black and grey. I used a copy of LeMans magazine than had a feature on the C5-R to detail the interior.

Once the paint had cured on the body, I started applying the decals. They are very easy to apply and seem to conform well to the contours of the body. Those that needed a little help from Micro-Sol reacted well to the solution with no wrinkling, and snugged down tight to the body.

At this point I "test-fit" the parts together to get an idea of how it might look. The wing is not in place, the glass isn't done, and there's still a few decals to go, but I was pleased so far. The wing is assembled from a resin wing and PE supports, and glued to the body. The rear-view mirrors also needed to be applied - one tip I learned after the fact was on some of these 1/43 kits, it's easier to glue the mirrors on prior to painting, to do it all at once. That way,

The remainder of the decals were applied, and the whole car was then overcoated with Tamiya Clear to seal them in. On retrospect, I don't know if I would do that again, as I think it made the car just a bit too glossy. Finally, the vacuformed glass was trimmed out and glued in place using white glue. Be extra careful when cutting this stuff out, as if it gets messed up, it's very obvious. Always trim it just a big larger and then slowly cut it back until it fits right. The glass on this one is not quite right, but fortunately the windshield decal covers up a small gap.