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Anyone who's built the Hasegawa '67 Type 2 pickup kit should be in familiar territory- this kit is similar to that one. It's a tradtional Japanese curbside kit- having no engine besides the lower half molded to the transaxle unit. Front suspension is steerable, and attaches via nylon donuts, as with most Hasegawa and Tamiya kits I've encountered in the past. The tires are no-name soft rubber, and the wheels are very nicely done, although there is no hub/lugnut detail, so the VW-branded baby moon caps are mandatory unless you'd like to perform a little plastic surgery to the wheel hubs. The side and rear doors are molded partly open, and only joined at the hinges. The instructions mention that they can be cut open and reattached in the open position, but Hasegawa points out that this kit does not include the inner door panels, which is correct. This seems to imply there is a version of this kit which does have those parts, and I have to wonder why Hasegawa did not include them. Hasegawa did include two HUGE resin surfboards (I guess they'd be long boards?
) with kit, each with a separately molded fin, and also two resin roof rack bars, as well as graphics on the decal sheet for the boards. Let's face it, any 'non-hippie' mircobus is probably a surf wagon, right? About those decals- Hasegawa's are some of the best I've ever used- they lay down well, and are pretty forgiving as far as positioning them on the model.Like most kits of this type, the body and interior are pretty well done, and that compensates somewhat for the lack of any engine detail. Detail freaks will pass this kit up in favor of the Revell Samba bus, due to its engine and opening,hinged doors. The Revell kit is fairly easy to build for how complex it is, but is still a bit off-putting to many modelers, the Hasegawa is a cakewalk to build. The Revell kit sells for about what I bought my Hasegawa example for, so if you can find the Hasegawa kit for a bargain basement price, I'd still reccomend it. The time spent not fiddling with the Revell's hinged doors and engine parts could be time spent customizing the van, or focusing on interior detail, as the interior is in plain sight with all those windows. I wanted this kit when it was almost eighty bucks, now that some places are selling it for much, much less, I'd say it's a must-have for any Vee Dub fanatic!
