Panzer IV F1-F2-G by Italaerei, No. 217
The basis of this review and comments come from vintage-italeri-pz-iv-build-kit-bash.
My kit was an initial pressing from 1974 according to the vendor I purchased it from in 1989. I’d looked for nearly two years trying to find an Italeri Pz IV since they were rumored to be the best Pz IV at that time. In late 2020, the model went on the workbench…
4 Price ~$32 flea bay now (paid ~$7 in 1989 or $18 in 2025 inflation adjusted $$$)
4 Instructions - old and dusty but easy to follow.
4 Molding Quality - High quality, I don’t recall any short shots, sink marks or warped parts or any quality control issues with this kit.
5 Plastic Quality - Like butter, this kit stayed in climate controlled environment and was like new quality plastic, 10x times better than that garbage Italeri Panther kit.
3 Parts Clean Up - punch marks on the rear exterior tail plate are pretty terrible. They are very hard to fix and I used parts from another kit plus scratch building
2 Ease of Build - out of the box 5 as it’s very simple but realistically if this kit sees the workbench it’s going to get modifications with aftermarket, kit bashing or scratch building or all three techniques.
1 Accuracy - It was marketed as 3 n 1 but doesn’t have the appropriate parts and details for the three different Ausf’s. It’s representative in general but not accurate. Likewise, the rear of the turret was flagrantly wrong on the early kit. I believe this was revised later. See build thread for details and modifications etc. The fenders in the kit are laughable if you’ve seen a picture of a Pz IV. If you’ve had the pleasure of climbing all over a Pz IV, you’ll want to revise nearly everything in the kit.
5 Fit That’s right and here’s why…
All of the Italeri parts fit well.
All of the Model-Kasten wheels & tracks fit well.
All of the stolen Dragon parts fit well with a few tweaks.
All of the black market Tamiya parts fit well with a few tweaks.
All of the Tiger Model Design parts fit
In my opinion, that could only happen because the bones and basic design of the kit was correct or very close.
0 Doesn’t Require Aftermarket
The kit needs tracks, tools, main gun, MG’s and Dragon fenders at the very least. Plus a lot of PE brass etc.
0 Details built Out of the Box
The punch mark riddled exterior rear plate just about wrecks out of the box potential. It can be fixed but I’ve seen it correctly fixed so the punch marks are undetectable only a handful of times. With the age of the kit, potential upside is limited these days.
28 points out of 50
28/50 => 56%
Recommended for a nostalgia themed campaign or group builds. Otherwise, not recommended.
With that said, I found this kit to be a very enjoyable build because of it’s high quality plastic and quality plastic parts that were free of manufacturing defects, like short shots, sinkmarks & warpage.
