This must be Model Art’s 50th Anniversary – at least, that is how I interpret the little 50th logo on the front cover. As usual, Model Art No. 750 June 2008 is in almost 100% Japanese language. The format is close to 7x10 inches in size, and as usual, the printing and reproduction quality is excellent. Most of the articles and reviews (but not the featurettes or ads) are mostly in color.
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This British “Car, Light Utility” was based on a passenger car chassis. They were produced by several manufactures and used throughout WWII from Dunkirk to North Africa. Nicknamed “Tilly”, they were powered by a 10 hp engine, lacked 4-wheel drive, and poorly suited for off road assignments. They were used in rear areas and on British airbases in a variety of roles.
This new kit from Tamiya is contains one sprue of gray parts and one of clear parts. The clear parts are for the windshield, windows, one headlight, fender lights, and the canvas cover for the cargo compartment. The molding is crisp and clean with excellent detail and no flash. There is a driver figure included, as well as an excellent decal sheet. The instruction sheet includes 8 construction steps with detail painting call outs form Tamiya paints. It also includes a marking and painting guide on the back of the sheet for 3 trucks.
I would like to thank Dragon Models USA for submitting this item to IPMS for review and IPMS for allowing me to review it.
Background
The Ferrari 312T was designed by Mauro Forghieri for the 1975 Gran Prix season. Over the next six years the 312T series won 27 races, four constructors' and three drivers' championships The car was powered by a flat-12 cylinder engine which produced approximately 510bhp. The "T" in "312T" stood for transverse. This was the mounting configuration of the gearbox which improved the car's handling characteristics over its predecessors.
Back in 1976 Ken Tyrrell ran a Formula One Race team. He employed an innovative car designer named Derek Gardner. Up to this point in Formula One or Grand Prix as it is called, many designers tried some pretty radical designs in the hopes of gaining an advantage over the other competitors. Mr. Gardner came up with one of the wildest designs and it worked. This was the Tyrrell Project 34 six wheeled car. He felt that by reducing the drag on the front end the car would have an advantage in front line speed. By doing this he put four small (10") wheels on the front thereby reducing the drag and still keeping the grip. This car ran for 30 races between 1976 and 1979 and achieved a win in the process at the Swedish Gran Prix.
Those of us that like to display our automotive models with the hood open generally face two problems. The first is, of course, having an accurate-looking hinge mechanism, and the second is keeping the hood open. It’s just about impossible to build accurate-looking hood hinges that are also strong enough to do the job they are supposed to do: they’re fairly complicated mechanisms with springs and multiple pivot points that just can’t be accurately reproduced in plastic. Well, J3 Models has a solution to this problem in their fixed open hood hinges.
Each hinge consists of a piece of photo-etched (I assume) metal representing the hinge itself, and a spring which attaches to the hinge to produce a fairly good replica of a hood hinge in the open position. There is a large horizontal surface available to attach the hood to, and another large surface that can be glued into the engine compartment to hold the hood in the open position.