So I have been selling off an estate collection over the past few years and there were quite a few old Tamiya kits. And the one I was most fascinated by is the Tamiya Saladin Mk 2 Armored Car. I saw some detal sets for the new Dragon kit but am not willing to shell out the cash for it. Anyone know of OOP detail sets for the Tamiya one? Or is the Tamiya kit not worth bothering with?
The Tamiya Saladin kit has been out of production probably for longer than most AM companies have been around. I doubt if any upgrades exist for it. At best you can dress it up with generic item and some scratch built details.
That kit hasn’t been issued since 1971, so as Stik suggests, thats before AM companies even existed.
a Historical relic with out-of-scale rubber wheels, adding aftermarket is lipstick on a pig.
If you want motorised fun, build it, shouldn’t take more than an hour or two…
If you want more Accuracy and a waay more up to date tooling, use the Dragon kit & Perfect Scale Modellbau resin to taste.
Your call
I had not remembered vinyl tires with the Tamiya kit–but I bult mine circa 1975, too.
Scalemates: https://www.scalemates.com/search.php?fkSECTION[]=All&q=1%3A35+saladin*
There’s quite a lot of AM stuff, if for the Dragon and Accurate kits.
Probably buildable today, if a bit of a jurassic kit. (Not as much as if you found a 1964 issue with a motor, though.)
Ha ha, I had the motorized kit! I bought it around 1978 or so. Yep, quite far down the evolutionary sprue tree! The tires were polyethylene, not vinyl BTW. I think I still have the chassis in the parts box.
Your best bet would to be to sell the old Tamiya collectable kit on eBay and use the money to buy the newer Dragon black label kit (which has issues).
I had that kit when it was motorized.
i have one of those. it is almost built. been filling in all the holes. I am going to use it as a practice piece for heavy built up mud on a muddy base.
I’ve built it a couple of times myself, once when it was “new” and once about 20 yeras age (hint, hint) and I noticed even as a kid that it was “off” dimensionally. It was fun though.
What are the issues with the Dragon kit ?
My brother built one of those in 1970 or so. A bunch us took some pictures in battle scenes with a bunch of kits in a housing development. I still have the photos, but they are on slides, remember those, so I have not looked at them in decades. I was 20 years old, and I was not impressed with the kit. Well, it wasn’t a “tank”, and it was modern, also it was wheeled. That’s 3 strikes against it. At least it was British. Man that was a LOOOONG time ago. A good thing is that my brother, now retired, has been back into plastic kit building and over the past few years , with grown children and living half a continent away, we have found that we are the same kids. Life is good.
I’ve only read reviews of the Dragon kit, they are positive, mostly, aside from the knock out pins on inside hatches. Not a big deal, in my opinion.
Scan those Slides !!