The Italeri Bergepanther Kit # 285, originally released back in 1995, is still standing sentry duty as the only readily available injection-molded set of sprues for this Panther-based German tank recovery vehicle. The model has gone through a number of updates and improvements since, culminating in what you see reviewed here. After all this time, however, Italeri’s offering ‘still has it goin’ on’, sporting a relatively detailed engine, transmission, and winch/cable assembly, all housed in a decent Panther A chassis. One heck of a value, and still the only game in town.

The set provides eight resin replacement wheels and tires, molded as one piece, for the Russian BTR-60 APC. The tires are slightly wider than the Trumpeter rubber tires. The Hauler wheels are a different style and much smaller than the Trumpeter wheels. The Hauler tires have a crisper tread pattern than the Trumpeter tires and are molded without a center seam. They do not have a flattened portion for the weight of the vehicle.

Each of the wheels is molded with their own casting block. The mounting hole for the wheel is much larger than the Trumpeter axle so it needs to be drilled out. Mounted on the vehicle, it becomes apparent that the Hauler wheels are smaller and the tires have a larger profile.

The profile and size of the Hauler wheels provide a good option to the Trumpeter kit wheels. The tire tread is much crisper, even at this small scale.

Thanks to Hauler for continuing to produce these nice add-on parts and providing review samples to IPMS.

The next Cyber-Hobby Orange Box offering is a Red Army M4A2(76) tank. A total of 4,102 M4A2 medium tanks were sent to the U.S.S.R. under Lend-Lease during WWII. To make the kit more valuable, the kit includes a fine 1/35 scale Maxim machine gun as well!

Opening the Box

This thin, side-opening Dragon box is filled with a nice amount of parts. The sprues are molded in light grey plastic and have some really detailed cast textures and weld seams.

The kit includes:

• Seven sprues
• One clear sprue
• One small cable
• Two small sheets of PE
• Two lengths of DS track
• One gun mantlet cover made of the same DS material
• One small decal sheet

They provide decals for two tanks:

This detail set by Hauler provides numerous license plate frames in different shapes for WWII German vehicles. The set is a steel photoetch fret that is 1 1/8”x3 7/8”. The PE pieces have a slight curl to them. This set provides only the backing plate for licenses, but no decals or stickers are provided for the actual license plate graphic. Mounting brackets are not provided either.

There are 33 license plates provided in the following sizes in millimeters (width x height):

• 6 - 14x3 rounded corners
• 6 - 9x5 rounded corners
• 3 - 6x4 rounded corners, no edging
• 3 - 10x3 rounded corners, no edging
• 6 - 9x6 notched corners
• 6 - 14x3 square corners
• 3 - 9x6 rounded corners

The photoetch pieces are thin and closer in scale than base kit plastic pieces. These license frames are a good option to replace thick (or lost) plastic kit pieces.

You’ve got to give Dragon Models some real credit – they’re willing to put out the oddball kit now and then, and to do it with class. The U.S.-made T54-E1 tank (not to be confused with the Russian T54) was one of the several attempts in the mid-50’s to upgrade the M48 from its 90mm gun to something with a bit more punch. Three different approaches to this idea were initially attempted, including this one, which clearly owes its ancestry to the famous French AMX-13 tank developed around the same time. The idea, of course, was that an autoloading main gun would eliminate the need for a human loader, and would permit extremely rapid firing during combat. There were a couple of problems with this idea, however. First, once the nine-round “magazine” was expended, someone typically had to exit the vehicle to reload it – not something you necessarily want to do under fire.