The plastic quality is a nice change from the usual overly soft plastic commonly found in Eastern European kits. Fit for the most part is excellent. The only area needing any real attention was at the join between the front of the rear fenders and the body.

Detail is decent but there should be a few rivets on the body which are absent.

The instructions are quite good though they are a bit vague in some places. Location points are non-existent for a lot of the parts and you have to refer back to the art work or other references to get an idea as to where to place things.

I built this kit pretty much straight from the box.

Take care when building the turret. The instructions in step 5 have all the part numbers crossed out in freehand with what looks to be a circled N beside each (parts 174D, 179D & 180D). I took this to mean that these are the incorrect parts and checked the sprue layouts on the instructions. Here the proper parts are circled (84D, 95D & 99D)

One trouble spot to watch for is the placement of the rear suspension unit. In step 3 of the instructions you need to cut of 6.5mm from the frame (part 20B) before attaching it to the body. I found it easier to put the body together as outlined in step 6 and then test fit the frame to see exactly how much of it needs removal. This way I was able to cut off the exact portion of the chassis required.

Placing the rear suspension assembly is also troublesome. There is an indistinct locating point for it on the frame. Some test fitting is needed here to make sure it gets located properly.

The tires are of the vinyl variety. They are nicely molded and the detail on the sidewalls is excellent, but they are vinyl and impossible to glue. I tested to see if I could get super glue to hold the tires onto the rims. I chose a couple of the tires and applied the super glue to the backside of the wheels. Unfortunately this failed so I just pushed all the tires onto the rims. This resulted in some uneven gaps between the rims and the tires. Surprisingly all the tires did touch the ground without any suspension tweaks on my part.

The fender brace (part 17B) needs to be cut into two separate pieces by removing a section from the middle and trimming the ends of the two pieces to length. This proved to be problematic trying to get the correct amount removed so that each piece would sit the same on the model.

I thinned the steps (part 16A) located under the doors, added door handles from thin wire and also some rear fender braces fashioned from thin plastic strip as shown on the box’s artwork.

The decals are thin, in register, have a matte finish and apply to the kit very nicely. They settled down well after a soaking in Microsol. The sheet contains a few red stars, a variety of generic white numerals and the patriotic phrase Za Rodiniya (“For the motherland”).