So, about 4 days ago I found a vintage kit from the 1970's on Ebay. This kit arrived today. The box was torn, and the kit came with all the pieces, as the seller said, including the MOTOR!
A little background:
This model is of the Cold War tank, the French AMX30. It is part of the modeling heyday when 1 48 and 1 35 tank kits came with little motors to power them. The company which made it (OTAKI) now no longer exists, having gone out of business in 1980 according to wikipedia. The model's mold, as well as many others, was sold to Arii, and is still being produced today as a 1:48 simple RC kit, that's around $11, which is likely why I got this highly "rare" kit for about $20, considering it's not even a rare mold. I plan to revive Otaki's beautiful old kit in the build log, and will hopefully submit a review of this exceptionally uncommon build. I give the build around a week, so stay tuned!

Below are photos of the sprues and motor pieces as they where after being taken out of their torn bags.













Apparently models back then came with glue!

You are lucky the track survived the rubber band tended to perish and take the track with it,
I look forward to the build

Talk about "back in the day". I built my first kit, in 1989.

For Alex's sake I hope not, but I wouldn't be surprised for them to fall apart when they start getting worked with.

Nice find! From the pictures of the parts it's hard to tell it's a AMX30 but if the company tells it, believe it
Enjoy your build. I will sit and wait for your blog

Olivier

Just finished the hull and motor placement, actually! I will post pictures soon, and to my surprise, the rubber band tracks held on very well!

Olivier: I guess that's how kits where back then! Although I have to say, it's going to need some heavy modifications to the turret in order to look a tiny bit more like an AMX30!

So here's the first update. My apparent "surprise" when reading more about this kit on the niches of the search engine (in other words, there was barely anything about it)was that it was not particularly well... detailed for it's time. I finished the kit construction, and will post some photos tomorrow, but for now, I'll just say it maintains some characteristics of the AMX30.

Also, the seller get's a 4/5 rating on honesty. The kit was missing a front axle
I reconstructed the axle using a rusted bar around the same size, and in some technicality, screwed up the front two idlers with my dremel.









As noted before, the rubber band tracks held on nicely... they are however, the most ugly tracks I've seen in my 5 years as an scale armor modeller.

In hindsight, this kit was a good purchase. The "new" kit uses the same molds, and is motorized with an RC factor instead, and as an import costs much more than the 20 US$ I spent. I plan to build more motorized kits in 1 48 scale, but this time from Academy. Any thoughts/comments?

At least it looks like a tank, not the best rendition of an AMX30 though
Is it really designed to be remote controlled or is there any kind of cable to "drive" it?

Olivier

The new "tooled" kit (though the molds are original) has an RC option with a cable coming out of the back end.
Here's an example of a more modern kit in 1:48 with "remote Control" options. I plan to build it next: