Are you sure?? Wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to take one of their nice little Pk.IB kits and modify it instead? Turning a Pz.IA chassis into a IB chassis would involve an *awful* lot of effort -- mainly lengthening the hull, modifying the upper hull rear, adding the extra roadwheel and thereby modifying the transmission ... there's nothing wrong with their Pz.IB kits (except for the very original releases that had the bad idler, but they fixed that pretty quick) so they would make the ideal starting point.
I can't recall if any of their Pz.IB kits had interiors, but I don't believe so. So unless these are all brand-new parts they must have come from their recent Pz.IA kit. That being the case the careful builder might want to check his references ... I don't think there's a
*lot* of difference between the interior of the IA and IB versions, but I suspect that there are *some* differences.Well, it sounds like a definite improvement over the previous 1/35th offerings, for sure! I have the Maquette kit which is a rather awkward mix of Italeri hull with resin and white metal conversion parts, none of which offer much in the way of detail (or any interior for that matter, somewhat embarrassing in an open-topped vehicle! Of course it's not made less odd by the fact that Italeri/Zvezda offered the PzJg 1 kit separately (but again without much of an interior), so the Maquette "conversion" doesn't really offer anything, much. Pain, maybe.
I was really excited to hear of this new Dragon kit. While the thought that they've maybe used the wrong hull as the starting point seems needlessly complicated, so long as it ends up looking right when finished, the other advantages (particularly the gun) should make it well-worthwhile.
One minor disappointment: Dragon could have offered the "early" (5- sided shield) and "late" (7-sided shield) versions of the vehicle in the box; but a conversion to the 5-sided shield would probably be pretty painless for those so inclined.
Bruce Melbourne, Australia