The third time around for this column features an armor kit from the dim past for the treadheads out there -- Aurora's 1/48 scale MBT-70. As far as I know this was the only kit made in any scale of this abortive US-West German joint attempt to develop a main battle tank for the 1970's and beyond, although Roco Minitanks makes a very nice pre-assembled model in 1/87 scale.

My model is apparently at least the second release of this kit, No. 060 with a copyright of 1976, as I once had an earlier issue in an oversized rectangular box that also included a vacuum-formed terrain display base. My example of this kit has well-molded, slightly textured, olive drab parts showing only a little flash but the decals leave something to be desired, with out-of-register West German crosses, ersatz serial numbers, and a WWII (!) style US star for the turret top.

One of the novel features of the MBT-70 was its ability to squat and reduce its height from 7.5 to 6.5 feet. The Aurora kit duplicates this in simplified form with a plastic "spring" mounted to the inside of the upper hull, allowing the model to be pushed down into the squatting position. Unfortunately this leaves some very unrealistic slots in the lower hull sides to allow the suspension arms to move up and down. The suspension detail also suffers from the return idlers being molded on to the hull sides but the tracks are very nice one-piece vinyl parts with good detail on both surfaces. The kit also has opening hatches (but no interior detail whatsoever), a rotating turret, elevating main gun, and movable AA gun. Exterior details are crude, featuring molded on tools and tow cable. Four fairly nice figures are included but only one tank crewmember, the commander. The others inexplicably are infantrymen; it would have been nice to have some other crew figures to fill up the open hatches.

Considering when this kit was first produced it was a pretty good effort, probably at least as good as the rest of the 1/48 armor done by Aurora. I’d like to see this and all the others reissued by Revell-Monogram, assuming they got the molds when they bought the rest of the Aurora tooling. They would be nice compliments to the old Bandai kits that are slowly being reissued by the new Frog company.

Until next month, remember, "Build what YOU like, the way YOU want to, and the critics will flame you every time." And don’t be afraid to build those rare kits; that’s what they were made for after all!