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The German 251 series of halftracks are some of the most recognizable of all World War II vehicles. Until recently, the only available kits were the really old 1960's Nitto Ausf. B, Tamiya's 1970's Ausf. C, and a couple Tamiya D versions from the early 80s. None of these kits are great, and a new 251 is more than welcome.
This new kit is molded in a really ugly grey-green plastic that is not of a good quality. The plastic has a lot of white stress marks, and when it is cut, trimmed and sanded it turns white, also. There is a fair amount of flash on some of the parts, while others are very cleanly molded. The suspension parts are leftover from AFV Club's previous kits.
Assembly starts with the floor and inner chassis parts. I was worried here that the multi-part lower body would not fit well, but everything goes together very well. The deep tongue and slot attachment points make assembly fool proof. Some holes have to be opened in the floor and firewall, so don't forget to do this before gluing everything in place. There are some gaps around the side wall/floor in the rear troop compartment that just don't close. At least on this version (troop carrier) the seats hide the gaps. The floor is split in two parts and there is a slight joint but nothing major. With the sides and floor assembled, I started to skip around a little on the assembly to prevent detail parts from getting broken off during further assembly.
Be sure not to forget to install part U5 before the lower hull floor U20 is attached. I forgot and had to shave U5 down by 3/4 to get it in place. The instructions don't really make a point of showing you how this part fits but it goes between the lower chassis sides and between the inner and outer floors.
The suspension is pretty complicated, but fits well. The front axle is complicated, and it takes some trimming to get some parts to fit. Parts B5, B6, and B10 and B12 take some attention. The front axle B12 was badly stressed and bent in my kit. The wheels are not posable in any way.
The rear suspension goes together very well. Both parts A10, which are little linkage bars, broke trying to remove them from the heavy sprues. Luckily the broken end is covered up. Again, the weird plastic doesn't help here as it is brittle. While the lower hull and chassis detail is excellent, the front wheels/tires are not very good. They are solid plastic, and molded in two halves. Bolt detail on the hubs is really poor. Tamiya's old 251 D wheels are much better. Likewise, while the outer rear wheels are very good (with little welds and fine details) the inner ones are rather heavy handed and lack a rim between the tire and wheel. The Tamiya inner wheels are, I think, much better. All of the Tamiya hubs are prett good also compared to the AFV Club wheels. AFV Club's gluable vinyl tracks are pretty nice. They are good for vinyl and are well detailed. Fit is so-so but since they are gluable it is easy to adjust the fit.
The interior of the fighting compartment and driver's area is very well done. The wooden panels that the various equipment and fittings are fastened to on the walls is duplicated for the first time on a 251 model. The vision ports, spare armored glass blocks, etc. for the driver's visors are all well done. The hinge mechanism that hold the driver's visors looks good but is overscale in thickness, so the visors can't be assembled in a fully opened position. Because the visors hinges are clunky, the leather head pad that mounts on top of the view port is rather skinny. The pad would not fit if you tried to glue the visors open because in the open position the thick hinges tend to drop down closer to the view port taking up the space where the pads fit. Too bad no decals are provided for the Driver's front panes as there are several driving instructions typically stencilled there.
Some nice MP-40's, rifles, MG-34 and MG-42 guns are also included. Optional leather and wood bench seats are supplied and, unlike the Tamiya kit, the lockers beneath the seats are pretty well represented. Two fire extinguishers are provided for the inner rear panel, but I think only one is carried on the right side. The driver's instrument panel has a lot of detail, but it is soft and not very crisp, so painting will be harder.
Be very careful installing the inner rifle racks/seat backs/bins. Fit is vague and the left side does not fit as well as the right. There is nothing to keep the seat backs horizontal, so be very careful. Also, despite drilling the appropriate holes in the floor, the pegs on the seat bottoms actually keep the troop compartment seats from fitting properly. You should mount the seats before adding the backs, as you can make sure the backs are more level this way.
Fit of the upper hull to the lower hull is good, as is the fit of the rear hull panel. Oddly, Tamiya's upper hull fits pretty well onto the AFV chassis also. Sink marks and mold pin marks are minimal or covered up, so you can finish the hull without a lot of puttying and sanding.
The rest of the kit is pretty much just adding the exterior details. The side lockers are molded closed, which is too bad. Optional early and late headlights are provided for the front fenders, which is a nice tough. The tools for the front fenders are ok but maybe a little chunky. The muffler is well done and a bit nicer than Tamiya's.
The engine deck hoods are seperate although the design of the chassis makes adding an engine difficult. The DML engine from their Sd.Kfz 250 engine set will not fit (should because it is the same engine), nor will Verlinden's engine. Hobby Fan will probably come up with the top part of an engine that will fit this kit specifically.
Decals for five Eastern Front vehicles are provided.
Overall a very good kit with some minor snags. Engineering and overall fit are very good. Some of the detailing was a bit disappointing compared to other recent kits or even compared to other areas of this kit.
AFV Club offers several sets of early, mid and late individual link tracks for this kit. In my opinion they are only fair. I would not purchase them again (I got one set); the seperate track pads are way too small (half the size of the pads on the vinyl tracks) and smaller than the pads on Model Kasten's excellent 251 tracks. Worse is the two large mold ejector marks; one on each side of the inside face of every link. The pins on the links break when you snap them together. Friul's metal tracks would be nice. Part of the reason the kit's vinyl tracks may not fit as well as they could is that according to the box of link tracks, the left and right tracks have different numbers of links but the vinyl tracks are the same length.
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