Matador Models - FV432/20 (Fox Turret) Build and Review

OK - so I was very chuffed recently to get this little goodie as one of my final purchases to round out my Berlin Brigade. It's a Matador Models FV432/20 (Fox Turret) and it comes like this:

Opening the box reveals a couple of plastic baggies:

Which opened up reveal the following:

As you can see some pretty crisp molding here and options to have every hatch open - which is very good in my book. Flipping the hull and tracks over you can see there is still a little work to be done:

So I cleaned it all up and the parts looked like this:

So now were we on to assembly. I'd like to say it all went together smoothly, but I'd be lying. I don't know if it was my superglue or the kind of resin used by Matador Models, but for some reason things just wouldn't stick together - at least not in the short term. After some hair pulling, a lot of crying and a little cursing it started to go my way and this is the end result:

I think you end up with a pretty smashing model of a FV432/20. There are a couple of negatives. First up - no plans whatsoever. When you pay 23 quid for a model I feel there should at least be a decent drawing of what it should look like from a couple of different angles. At least...

One is the other difficulty I previously mentioned, which turned a half hour job into a several hour job. The third is the metal RARDEN 30mm gun barrel. You get two options - one standard, one with a cover. I went with the standard gun and compared to the rest of the kit, I looks a little naff. If I had a spare Scimitar or Warrior RARDEN barrel - I'd definitely use them.

My only other concern was the smoke dischargers. They look great, but I'm pretty sure I've placed them in the wrong spot... I'll have a think about removing them and placing them slightly differently, but due to the glue issues I'm not sure I'm up to it.

Finally, I thought a comparison shot might be worthwhile:

From left to right we have an S&S FV438 Swingfire, Cromwell Models FV434, Matador Fv432/20 and a Britannia FV432 APC. As you can see they all fit together very nicely.

So one day if I'm very lucky this new Matador model might just end up looking something like this!