Italeri 1/24 Mercedes 230G Paris-Dakar

See Scott’s preview  for a brief history and a detailed look in the box.

Upon opening the box you are greeted with a finely detailed kit, molded in white and black plastic. A large tree of clear parts is provided along with a piece of wire mesh for the bumper guard.

Also included but not mentioned in the instructions, are parts for a street version.

 Construction is straightforward. When I saw the quality level of the castings, I decided to build this one truly out-of-box.

 The chassis is the first step and is a bit fiddly. The front axle in particular takes about 3 hands to get it all in the right places. It appears that the kit was intended to have workable steering, but the last piece installed (25b) locks it straight ahead. The tie-bar (part 31b) is a bit too long and gives the tires excessive camber (in at the top). To cure this a very small chunk (about 1/8^th) will have to be removed and the bar glued back together.

Trap the axles between the frame rails, but do not glue them, this will make installing the drive shafts easier. I found the rear drive shaft to be too short. They are a positive fit with a pin that fits in a hole. I had to remove the locating pin on the rear shaft to get it to fit.

The instructions show the exhaust pipes going over the fuel tank, but I couldn’t get it to fit. I ended up cutting some notches in the tank to make it fit and running it under the tank.

 The interior is basic, but so was the real thing. It does however have nice decals for the gauges and other dash controls. Detail is good and one-piece side panels are included.

The instructions show the large fuel tank going in the very back of the truck. Given the position of the filler openings on the outside, it belongs right behind the drivers seat.

The window filler panels are shown being installed from the outside. The box art shows the filler panels recessed and I installed them from the inside to replicate this

 The body has all the accessories that you would expect: driving lights, brush guard, radio antenna, etc. The clear parts for the driving lights don’t fit the actual lights and a bit of work is required here.

The kit gives you a wire mesh for the brush guard and a template to cut it with. Don’t…the template is too small. Instead, draw around the guard and use that as a template and just do a final trim when you glue it in place. On that topic, CA-type glue will be required to get the mesh to stick to the plastic guard.

If this kit has a high point, it is the decals. They are printed by Cartograf and are very thin. They look beautiful.

One odd point is that the history given on the instruction sheet says, “One such model, specially adapted for the occasion, won the 1982 edition of the famous Paris-Dakar race, with J. Ickx and C. Brasseur driving”. This however, is NOT the one depicted by the decal sheet.

 As the body was very nicely cast in white plastic, I decided not to paint it. That’s right…. no paint! It has none of the “plastic swirl” you see in the older Monogram/Revell silver kits.

After washing the body, I painted the side moldings and wheel arches flat black and I applied the decals directly on the plastic. For the most part they went on nicely, although I did have a little trouble where the go around the back corners, but they reacted well to Solvaset and that was that. In fact, they reacted so well that they pulled down so tight, they ripped around the door hinges and required touchup. You will want to take care here, as the blue areas are very big decals.

The decals included a wraparound piece for the back, but the instructions don’t show this piece, so I left it off. I doubt it would have conformed to the complicated back section anyway.

This kit builds very nice right out of the box. I believe if you have a child who wants to give a car model a try, this would be an excellent choice. Good fit, not too complicated but a bit of a challenge.

As I mentioned, the kit includes all the parts required for a street version. Look for another review in the future, as I intend on striping this one and giving the street version a try.

April 2006

  Just the box and a few photos off the Internet.

 Thanks to for the review kit. You can find Italeri kits at your favorite hobby shop or on-line at www.testors.com