AK Land Rover 88 Series IIA

I've just received this much anticipated kit today and after a quick look in the box felt a review was in order. Like the recent Unimog series of kits issued by AK this kit comes in a very sturdy box with a very nice bit of box art showing a vehicle in Aden colours. You will also see that it is licenced by Land Rover as well so you would expect the details to be correct. On the side of the box are marking options for no less than seven vehicles, five British and one Finnish and one Lebanese. I'll come back to the decal options later.

On opening the box you have nine sprues of a nice grey plastic and one for the clear parts. Also a separate box contains a very nice canvas top. You also get rubber wheels which look superb and have goodyear on the side walls as well as the decals and a very smart etched fret. The instruction booklet is very high quality covering all stages of the build in super clear illustrations with clear colour call outs along the way. It's 37 pages of excellence!  All the parts look to be very well cast and have excellent detail with minimal clean up and only a few ejector pin marks to deal with. 

I should mention that the kit has a full engine and bay with some excellent detail as well as a very nice gearbox and drivetrain. The only thing I can see you might want to add is any cabling or wiring within the engine bay. This should be very easy to do as a quick search of the internet will throw up plenty of references. You also get the option of right or left hand drive as well with clear instructions on parts placement to achieve your choice.

Next the decals which are printed by Cartograf. These look superb with everything in register. the colours are crisp and carrier film is minimal. I like the UN decals which have a rough hand painted look to them. 

I'm really impressed with the quality of this kit. The packaging is first class as is the instruction booklet. It feels a well thought out and researched product, there has been some care put into this. The excellent decal options are also great to have with interesting subjects. Also it's high time we had a short wheelbase Land Rover in plastic and the series II is a perfect choice I think. This is going on the bench very soon as I've been holding off starting a new project until I saw this kit. Highly recommended.