The Panther’s excellent combination of firepower, mobility, and protection served as a benchmark for other nations’ late war and post-war tank designs, and it is regarded as one of the best tanks of World War II.
Introduction
The Panther is less famous then the Tiger or King Tiger, however battle efficiency wise the Panther was a more successful design. With better sloped armor and better speed, engine reliability makes this superior to the Tiger, although the Tiger had a more profound psychological effect.
Assembly Process
As usual the first part is the running gear which is made of allot of wheels and the thing I hate the most, those plastic individual link tracks.
Some of the wheels had to actually be trimmed in their small matching holes because they could not be mounted on the lower hull. Also, I had to trim minor flash of them. It isn’t much flash but it is noticeable. And of course, i made a mess of the tracks, as you can see bellow.
Luckily next was the turret with its sexy look. It fits well together and it was a pleasure to assemble as it just looks and feels like a panther.
The upper hull is nicely detailed, however allot is pre-casted onto it. There are though about 20 pieces that you can glue on it for more detail. I don’t usually like to stuff all the pieces on my models as it doesn’t look realistic in my opinion so for example I did not add the tracks that were supposed to be added at the back of the hull, attached to the horizontal bar that you can see in the picture.
Fitting the turret together I noticed that I glued some of the details on the upper hull in such way that they wouldn’t allow the turret to rotate fully so i made some adjustments.
At the end I just had to glue the upper hull and the lower hull together. Again, I encountered several problems, one of which being that the two parts would not fit together perfectly, and they would leave a 1mm gap between them in one side. I tried and tried again and I nearly closed the gap by allot of pressing and allot of glue, but it still doesn’t look the way it is supposed to.
Evaluation
| Plastic Quality | 4 (Good) | The plastic does not easily bend or break. Minor flash had to be removed from the pieces (running gear mostly). |
| Number of Details | 3 (Mediocre) | Detailing could be better especially on the turret and upper hull where the motor is casted. |
| Instructions | 3 (Mediocre) | Instructions are ok but lack of color does not make the paint scheme look realistic. |
| Building Time | 4.5 (Very Good) | A nice kit to assemble in a 60 minute span. |
| Enjoyment | 3 (Mediocre) | I liked the overall kit however I have to downrate it because of the tracks that have to be assembled piece by piece. |
The plastic is a higher quality so it doesn’t bend easily which is a plus. The model is detailed enough and it represents a good mix between details and speed of assembly. I would recommend the model if it wasn’t (again) for the awful plastic single link tracks.
Leave a Reply