Italeri has annnounced the updating of one of its big cats. This should be a welcome release for a lot of German armor fans.

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If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

Well it's not really a re-release with updates stricto sensu, they never did an Ausf G before and the Ausf G is quite different from the Ausf D and Ausf A.

Cheers,

Christophe

Interesting. The upper hull sprue, sponson floor sprues, and track link sprues are new (as is the PE fret). The lower hull/wheel sprue is the old Italeri one (complete with "thin" rubber tyres) that is in all their Panther variants, and the turret sprue is only slightly revised (the ventilator is now separate) from the Panther A kit. I'd be interested to know if they revised the muzzle brake to have some detail - the original was a "blob" best covered with a canvas bag!

For shots of the Panther A, see my review of the Italeri Panther A here on Armorama.

Tom

The Italeri kit may not have the quality of DML/Cyberhobby's 6267 plastic, but at least it is better researched with regard to the spaced plates over the engine deck vents that were on vehicles 424 and 434.

Thanks, Kevin, for posting that.

I'd like to know the price difference, as the kit is on a lower order of accuracy than the DML kits. The justification for buying Italeri kits is usually that they're more-affordable. That will be brought into question if this kit is comparable in price to the Dragon ones.

Honestly, this looks like the Gunze hull from the old DML/Panther II kits... it definitely doesn't look new to me. And these days, Itlaeri is asking an arm and a leg for their new kits in the US... so I'm not impressed at all.

Back in the day, about 30 years ago, Italeri kits were fabulous. Nowadays they are not so good against the competition. It's about time they brought out some brand new kits. Also, in the UK at least, Italeri kits have always been cheap but noticed that some of the newer updated kits are a real high price recently, and as far as I'm concerned, just not worth it.

I've noticed the same thing regarding the prices of their aircraft kits Stevie.

Well I think that Italeri can't reduce their prices because it probably doesn't make the PE parts and the moulds in China.
Considering that I paid 32€ for the new Zvezda T-90 model, 37€ for a refurbished kit it's a too high price indeed
Being Italian i'm quite proud about the Italeri improvments although I understand that their kits aren't good as the DML ones. In my humble opinion they should take more risks and try to reproduce something totally new, rather than improve their old molds. I've heard for example that they are about to produce an armoured vehicle Lince in 1/35 scale. That's would be a good marketing policy!

Cheers

Well... Another Panther... Anybody counted them all?