Anyone ever built one of these kits by Peerless?



Is it just the Italeri or Zvezda kit reboxed? How is quality? I have the old Italeri one but one or two of the parts may need bent back into shape with a hair dryer or something because they are warped. I've never seen any of the offerings by Peerless and was curious.

Actually, the Italeri/Zvesda kits are reboxes of the Peerless. I built one of the Italeri offerings many, many moons ago and from what I remember, the fit wasn't too bad.

Chris "toadman" Hughes
Toadman's Tank Pictures

As Chris has stated, it is the old Peerless Max kit that has been issued by Airfix, Italeri, Testors and now Zvezda. The latest issue by Zvezda (they have an earlier release as well) comes with a new canvas soft top. It is a relatively decent kit, Eduard made a detail set for it but may now be out of production.

You're fortunate to have the Peerlass version. The originals tend to be of better quality. The Zvezda "CKAYT" suffered from heavy flash in spots. It had some deep ejector marks in some unfortunate places, like inside the doors, and worse, the MG rail. All in all the kit in any incarnation is nicely detailed for its day. Obviously replacements just being the guns and fuel cans.
I did not buy the PE set for my first two, both of which were armored cars variants (pic of one in gallery) but may for the next one. The PE set can still be found by Googling.

I have the Italeri kit, and I don't know if it's because it was poorly stoored, and affected by heat, or what, but it's the most brittle kit I've ever worked on. The machine gun rail has broken into several pieces, and I haven't even tried to remove it from the sprue yet. Other parts have snapped in two with very little effort. I like the kit, and I may some day want to get the latest Zvezda one, hoping the plastic will be in better shape.

I built the Zvezda kit...wasn´t all bad, the fit it´s kinda tricky, too flashy and a some really awful ejector pins, but after a little work, and the replacement of the guns (that are the worst part of the kit in my opinion) turn into a very handsome model to display.

Zvezda does 2 different kits, the original copy of Pearless/Italeri and a new one with a canvas top. I bought the latter, and came with all the parts to build a regular Scout plus the canvas (it´s not the best in town, but works). If you want to build one with it, it´s better to scratch it in my opinion.

Cheers