ESCI – 8338 – Merkava II

Description:

Merkava II

Unassembled plastic model kit in 1/72 scale of an Israeli Merkava main battle tank, II (or Mark II) variant, and upgrade introduced in 1983, focused on the urban warfare optimization of the Mark I.

This kit is a variant of kit ESCI – 8323 – Merkava, released the same year just by adding few extra parts for the turret, armour. This makes the kit bit less accurate for a Mark II, can be considered a sort of early Mark II.

The kit shares all the main parts with the parent release, in general terms it’s a good kit, with the exception of the simplification of solid double width wheels and the absence of central teeth in the tracks.

While Merkava I kit has no other competence in the 1/72 scale, the Mark II got attention of two Chinese makers, Lee – 9007 – Israeli Merkava and the Galaxy – S-Mars kit, and both are in general, considered not better than the ESCI kit. Italeri never has issued this Mark II variant.