This looks to be a very good model of the M48. I would however have expected the cloth mantlet cover to be present in dragon styrene or similar.

If it doesn't have the dust cover why bother. That's a prominent feature and only graveyard or gate guard ones don't have it. I'll pass until they make it right. A little off here and there is better than missing important parts of the whole tank. That's what you see not a little off on the minor details like the overall shape of the glacis plate which can be fixed with a little putty. Actually the turret on the Tamiya kit is correct, the height of the suspension is wrong and that can be fixed without major issues. I'm not going to spend $50 and add another $50 for a correct turret and cupola. Or the Legend kit which as far as I know is OOP. I'll stick with the Tamiya kit for now until I see some results of this kit. I have seen people try to do those covers from scratch and it never looks right.

The drawing on the box shows the cover, so maybe they include it as an add on or something. It's a terrible oversight that will limit the sales and that might hurt future releases of Vietnam era models. Dragon already has discontinued most of their Vietnam line.

Why don't they have options with these kits anymore?

I mean, the option of adding a cover, or the light... it wouldn't cost that much more to include them.



~ Jeff

Also (and I do not own any reference material) wouldn't this be more popular with aluminum wheels or was that primarily on the M60?



~ Jeff

It looks like to me that no matter what you buy to make these armored vehicles right you have to modify and scratch build. I served with the US Army in the 1/11th acr and drove many of the M113 vehicles. I spent many hours living in them, driving them, cleaning them and doing maintenance. Even the excellent Academy kit is flawed. I built a few of the Tamiya versions and got so frustrated I dumped them in the garbage. Maybe my skills could not get me to where I wanted at that time but even so they were terrible. The more I tried to fix it the more frustrated I got. I do not understand why these model makers do not get it right the first time. Are the details too small? How could a company forget the mantle cover on a tank? To me that's inexcusable, maybe I'm nitpicking having been in a Armored unit and having spent time on tanks and armored vehicles. I can never forget the smell of the exhaust of an M1 Abrams, that was the only place you could keep warm in the motor pool on a winter day in Germany.