It has taken some time – about 120 hours to be more exact –
and some encouragement from his friends, but François has finished Panda’s
1/35 scale Cougar 4X4 MRAP. And it turned out to be a very nice looking, and highly
detailed kit. Here’s the story of his build...
Build Review: Cougar 4X4 MRAP
by Panda Hobby
Kit n°: PH 35003
Scale: 1/35th
Part Count: 520 + Photo-etched parts + decals
Price:¥5,220/ USD $42.70/ €38.91 from HobbyLink Japan
The Cougar is a very impressive military vehicle and quite a
complex one, almost as much as the Panda kit in 35th scale that has
only recently just been released. At 520+ parts inside the number of parts in
the box could discourage a few modellers out there as it very nearly did
François He loved the idea of this rugged vehicle and so he got straight into
the gluing and the cutting and sanding. We reckon the best review is a build
review so we thought building this kit would be the best way of showing you
just what the kit is like.
The biggest part of the construction of this kit is the crew
cabin of the Cougar. There are plenty of parts here to create the needed detail
and the level of surface detail looked very good indeed on the cabin one peice mould.
The sprues are packed
with lots of parts, all very nicely detailed.
Just take a look at
all the detail on the cabin floor:
The sprues are just packed with parts. Although these are
very nice, some of them won’t be seen on the finished kit.
Some model makers would use PE for this detail but the plastic here is good enough and easier than PE
There are no
injection marks or pins in visible places, which is a good thing and it will
speed up the construction.
The kit contains a lot of transparent parts, 54 parts on no
less than 3 sprues – even though the instructions show only 2 sprues - hmmm…
…And a very impressive number of photo-etched parts, some of
which are extremely tiny. Oh, and sorry about the flash...
The tires of this
Cougar are made in vinyl and well detailed as well.
So far that’s it for the plastic: lots of parts, very nicely
moulded out of the box.
The instructions
are quite good but have one big flaw according to us: you haven’t got a clue on
what colours you should use for the interior of this kit. It’s a pity that so
much work went into this kit, without including this. The only thing left to do
is googling. And good luck with that, it’ll take some time before you find
something useful.
The construction of this kit will keep you busy for many
hours and although we like the details, the construction of some sub-assemblies
might be just a little over the top in some places. Like the underside of the
Cougar, where you have to glue close to 100 small parts.
Some areas are very complex to construct. Our advice: stay
cool, take your time put on some good music. Some areas get extra detail with
photo-etched parts that have to be folded. Not always easy without a
folding-line. Parts like the mud-guard were replaced by plasticard, which is
much easier to use.
The interior of the vehicle is packed with detail and this
will keep you busy for quite some time as well. Again, research is necessary to
get the colours right. Some of the details are very fragile, like the hinges on
the seats. François replaced the very thin parts with home-made metal inserts.
The instructions aren’t always that clear and even indicate parts that aren’t
in the kit, such as the lateral details of part A45 ... strange.
When the interior is installed, the top and bottom part of
the Cougar are joined. This didn’t go as well as it should. François had to
fill a gap of over 1mm with plasticard and putty. The armoured glass is
extremely tight and needs some adjusting. In the end, brute force was necessary
to get it in the right spot, but there’s a lot of risk for the transparent
parts to crack.
One problem that we often noticed, was that a lot of
adjustment points were too small and had to be adjusted. The exhaust of the
Cougar needs to be modified as well and received some masking tape to make it
look more realistic.
The wheels, doors and turret are similar to the other areas
of the kit: nicely detailed, but very complex to construct. Again: take your
time and stay cool!
Each front door is built up out of 14 parts. Some plastic
parts are so tiny that they are smaller than the sprue connections!
The turret is also very detailed – 23 parts without the gun
- but oh so very fragile. But hey, by
now, you’re used to it, right? It is a lot of work, but the end result will be
impressive! The armoured glass in this area should be green, so out with the
green transparent paint.
With everything constructed, François could get started on
the painting stage. At last ! First thing to do: mask what needs to be masked.
Ready for painting!
See the gap that needed to be filled?
Primed and pre-shaded
with red-brown.
With the final colour
applied, the Cougar really starts to look like the real thing!
And now the fun part begins: the weathering. François is
always very keen to try out new products, such as washes, pigments, chipping
products, etc. This Cougar is a perfect subject for this! The photo shows the
progress on the turret:
Adding depth to
surface of the Cougar.
After a wash, the details are highlighted and some chipping
is done. She starts to look more realistic by now. In the next step, some
pigments will be used.
The underside can be
weathered in a much heavier way.
Revell and Mig pigments will finish the weathering process.
After this, it is time to unmask everything and finish the kit. After 120
hours, that’s a relieve!
Time to show the end
result:
Quite a sight in the
rear-view mirror... Take the next left hand turn. Quickly!
Lots and lots of
details to show ...
Ready for anything,
this Cougar!
And one more, in situation with dust from the chopper all
over the photo (sorry for that ...).
So, what about this Panda 1/35 Cougar 4x4 then? Well, it is
a very impressive kit, with an enormous amount of parts. This Panda kit has
quite a bit of similarities with its Kitty Hawk stable mates, in that the
detail is very nice, but the construction is not as easy as it could be to
build. Panda seem driven by the aim to fill the kit with detail, but one that
needs an experienced modeller to finish to a top standard. It might have been
better if Panda had taken some extra time to make the fit just that little more
snug, and maybe some painting instructions for the interior, sometimes the
instructions are not always as clear as they could be.. That’s it for the
negatives.
The end-result is fantastic, not a quick build but the
details are very nice. We noted that Panda has recently released the Cougar
6X6, which is an even more impressive machine. Being bigger, it will probably
have even more parts…
... maybe we’ll let
François have a breather first!
Model: François
Laloux
Text: Nicolas Deboeck
Many thanks to Panda Hobby for the kit
to review & build.
