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Tamiya 1/35 Leclerc French Main Battle Tank |
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Kit Number 35279 |
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Reviewed By Andrew Birkbeck, #27087 |
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MSRP: $57.00 USD The Leclerc tank entered service with the French Armed Forces in 1992, having begun development in 1977 as a replacement for the AMX-30 tank. Tamiya’s kit represents the up-rated “Series 2” vehicle, which ended production in 2004. The tank weighs in at 56 tons, and has a French-built 120mm smoothbore gun, with the vehicle being powered by a liquid-cooled V8 diesel engine. Tamiya’s kit consists of approximately 250 injection molded parts, along with 24 cast metal road wheels, and “rubber band” flexible tracks, the latter being fairly well detailed for this type of track. Also included is a very small decal sheet covering markings for four vehicles, three based in France, a fourth apparently based in Qatar in 1998. The kit is typical Tamiya: the parts have sharp detail, and all fit precisely. I have seen a couple of postings on the Internet saying that some have experienced fit problems with the hull bottom and top, but I did not experience any fit problems whatsoever with my kit. Instructions, as with all the Tamiya kits I have ever built, are excellent. If you follow them carefully, you will have no issues with everything going together nicely. As noted, Tamiya has begun introducing parts made out of cast metal into their kits, in this kit’s case, the road wheels, each in two halves. They started this practice with their 1/48th armored vehicles introduced at the beginning of 2005. I frankly am not a fan of cast metal, as if the parts don’t fit properly, it is a bear to try and file to shape for a better fit. I also don’t like the fact that you have to use superglue to attach the metal parts to the plastic parts. But this is just me, and the detail on the road wheels in this kit is very nice. Mr. Tamiya’s advertisements say the metal parts give the kit “scale weight”! Detail on the kit parts is pretty good overall, and from what I can deduce, fairly accurate. Construction as with most armor kits begins with the road wheels and the hull bottom details. Tamiya supplies the modeler with alignment jigs to help in the lining up of the suspension arms, and they worked fine for me. In step 5, make sure you paint the clear tail light parts (G1 and G2) their appropriate colors, and install them in the rear hull panel, part B9. If you fail to do this (guess why I know) you will find it quite difficult (but not impossible!) to install them later when the hull parts are all glued together. Also make sure that in Section 14, you carefully examine the various parts for the vehicle’s rear external fuel drums. Despite Tamiya trying to ensure that the parts will only go together the correct way, it is possible to get them mixed up, and this will cause you major problems when you go to attach the fuel drums to the vehicle in Section 16 (don’t ask……….) Tamiya sells a separate photo etched set that covers rear engine deck screens, and fuel drum mounting straps, a total of 11 parts. I frankly feel that given the price of the Leclerc kit (MSRP $57), these crucial 11 parts should have been included with the price of the kit. Yet Tamiya charges you an additional $15 for the pleasure of having these parts, parts which this reviewer believes are very important to the look of the finished model. The Leclerc has rear deck engine screens and prominent straps to secure the external fuel drums, and the kit looks “wrong” without these in place. The final sections of the kit instructions deal with the turret assembly, and everything proceeded nicely for me in this area. It was here that I encountered the only prominent ejection pin marks, found on the inside of the turret basket. They aren’t difficult to deal with; however, it just would have been nice to have made it through construction without these little niggles, considering Tamiya managed to eliminate ejection pin marks everywhere else on the kit parts. With the kit’s construction completed, the instructions then move on to the painting of the model. There are two different color schemes called out in the kit instructions, three of the decal options having you use a standard NATO 3 color scheme of NATO Green, NATO Brown and NATO Black, while the second color scheme is for the Qatar-based vehicle, it being in a two tone Sand and Brown. And it is with these color instructions that we have a problem: while French military vehicles do indeed use Green, Brown and Black, they are a different hue than the standard NATO colors. Tamiya has a nice set of acrylic standard NATO colors, and these are called out in the instructions. To make for an easier review build, I used Tamiya’s NATO Black (XF-69) and NATO Green (XF-67), along with Humbrol 62 “Leather” mixed with about 30% black. The latter gives a Brown that has a more orange (chestnut) hue than the standard NATO Brown. Check out some good color photographs to see the colors you might wish to mix to get more accurate hues (see Bibliography at end of this review). So there you have it, Tamiya’s Leclerc is an accurate kit with good fidelity of detail on the parts, and these parts assemble in a trouble free way (if you are paying attention) to produce a very nice model. Compared to other new armor kits from Tamiya’s competitors (especially DML), this kit seems designed for ease of assembly over anything else, given the relatively few parts contained in the box. The kit is leagues ahead of the only other 1/35th Leclerc, Heller’s effort from a number of years ago. If you want a Leclerc for your collection, you need look no further than Tamiya’s kit. That said, I feel I must question Tamiya’s pricing of this model. At $57 for the kit, and a further $15 for the (very necessary in my opinion) etched set, we have $72. Compare this with what is coming from Tamiya’s direct competitors, DML and Trumpeter. DML is issuing most of its major armor models such as its recent Tiger 1 (Late) or their King Tiger (Henschel turret) for $37.95. Within the boxes of these kits the modeler will find more than twice the number of exquisitely detailed plastic parts compared to the Leclerc, along with crew figures, a turned aluminum barrel, braided wire tow cables, turned brass shells and as many as 100 photo etched parts. The value for money compared to the Tamiya Leclerc is far higher with the DML products. And Trumpeter? They don’t include turned aluminum barrels in their kits, nor as many photo etched parts, but ALL their armor kits seem priced the same: $24.95, a superb deal. It is said over 60% of Tamiya’s kit production stays in Japan, and I know that in Japan, Tamiya kits are priced very competitively with DML’s. I hope this is enough to keep Tamiya profitable, and producing fine kits such as the Leclerc. However, at least in the US market, I feel Tamiya is at an extreme disadvantage with their pricing. If they are going to sell kits like the Leclerc to modelers other than hardcore Francophiles, they need to lower the price AND include the basic photo etched parts for the kit price. Otherwise the kits will just sit on the hobby shop shelves, gathering dust, while your average modeler snaps up the much more competitively priced DML and Trumpeter products. Here are two good web sites that cover the Leclerc: |
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