Fast forward thirty years. Fox body Mustangs are again sought after, skinny ties not so much.
And this poor Nashorn has been languishing unseen in the back of a stash that is way too big.
One of my boys was home sick all last week and requiring a lot of attention. No chance to do any painting of my other projects, but I did have some time to glue some bits together.
This is the original Dragon Nashorn, warts and all. I know it’s near a lost cause, but I have a really hard time throwing away a complete kit, no matter how rough it is. I also wouldn’t feel good about giving it away to a kid nearby as I want them to enjoy the hobby, not get frustrated.
I’ve decided to put a bit of work into it to try to fix or improve some of the obvious issues. Mostly added details to fool the eye a bit and make it look a little better. It definitely won’t win any awards. . The biggest piece of work so far was removal and replacement of the floor in the fighting compartment. I used some styrene tread plate and scratched the access handles with wire and foil.
On the front, I replaced the brake cooling vents with larger ones sourced from the spares box. I added weld beads around the plates that make up the drivers bulge. And finally I scribed the outline of the front plate, as there was no delineation of it on the kit.
I’m not going to try to fix the couple major issues with this kit, one being the tracks when installed are too close to the fenders. The other being the very misshapen gun shield and front armour. Those will just have to be overlooked.the kid is back to school this week, so I’m not sure when I’ll get more of this done, but it’s been a good exercise in some new skills for me this week.
1989 GT. Pretty clean inside, no power anything and the automatic, which isn’t a deal breaker. Unfortunately I found an issue when I opened the hood. At sometime in the past, it had damage to the front end. Enough to shift the structure where the front fenders mount almost 5/8” to one side near the nose. As a daily driver I could have lived with that, but as I wanted to clean it up and restore it…deal breaker for the price they wanted. Oh well, maybe next time.
As for the Nashorn, steer very clear of this one. There are much better, much newer kits out there that will go together much better.
Really? It was manual windows and door locks? That’s an oddball for sure especially being a GT. Good call on passing this one up as there are plenty out there with the options that you’ll want that aren’t banged up. Still a good looking car and all but dang…the damage seals the fate of any future ownership.
As far as the Dragon version of the Nashorn goes…I’ll probably pick a Tamiya version up if I decide to build one. Thank you for the heads up on that.
I’m pretty sure they won’t reissue this exact kit. They retooled the Nashorn / Hornisse some time later on. Those were much better kits, I’ve built one of them, though not sure if they are still in production. Also, as @mustang1989 mentioned, Tamiya has one - I hear it’s pretty good.
. The biggest piece of work so far was removal and replacement of the floor in the fighting compartment. I used some styrene tread plate and scratched the access handles with wire and foil.
