Daihatsu Midget - Part 1: Look in the box

 

Moving on the second wierd Japanese 3-wheeler kit in the pile I bought, I'm looking at the Daihatsu Midget. A quick web search shows that this truck has been through several facelifts, the most recent of which sees the spare tyre pearched on the nose in a way I can't decide is hideous, or quite appealing. 

Anyway, this model is of the 1958 version, which I suspect is the classic Midget. By this point it looked like someone had designed it for a start, and that curvy nose is really attractive. 

Inside the box, there's a one-piece moulding for the body, which has some pretty bad flash, in some anoying places - along curved edges beside the windscreen which won't be easy to clean up without taking off detail. 

The first thing that struck me was how much smaller it is than the Mazda T2000, under half the overall length for a start. It is undenably cute and would make (in real life) a lovely vehicle to potter around on short journeys in. 

As ever, the plan is to stick this thing together with no pretentions to super-detail. 

Rubber tyres are a nice feature of the kit, although I'm tempted to argue for plastic ones. These could have better tread detail, and would be easier to flatten at the bottom in a realistic way, but I said I wasn't going to get all finescale. 

One thing I found out by accident was that twisting and pulling the tyres from the runner gives a better result than cutting with a knife. This tends to put a flat in the tyre, whereas the twist'n'pull doesn't. I wonder why?