Godzilla: Invasion of Astro-Monster Planetary Defense Vehicle

       

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Original Kit:
Godzilla Planetary Defense Vehicle/Jeep Willys MB as featured in Invasion of Astro-Monster
Made By:
MPC (kit #882)
Scale:
1/25
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Planetary Defense Jeep MB from the movie Invasion of Astro-Monster
Godzilla Jeep dashboard Godzilla Jeep badges Godzilla Jeep engine Godzilla Jeep chassis Godzilla Jeep recoilless rifle Godzilla Jeep rear

 
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Officially, this kit was released under the Invasion of Astro-Monster banner. It was the sixth film in the Godzilla franchise, released in 1965 and featuring the King of Monsters along with Rodan and King Ghidorah. But near as I can tell that was just a matter of licensing, as I'm pretty sure the military footage that included this Jeep was the same footage used across several movies. Still, it's not like I'm one to complain about kits based on cameo appearances or old kits with new licensing, and I thought it was fun and clever move to celebrate Godzilla's 65th anniversary with a repop of MPC's old MB kit.

It's a kit that I've built before, so I knew pretty much what to expect. It looks like whoever was in charge of the molds took pretty good care of them, because flash and parting lines were minimal despite the age of the kit. The only parts I ended up replacing due to casting issues were the steering column and muzzle end of the recoilless rifle, and both probably could have been fixed but I was too lazy to do so.

Well, maybe not "lazy" so much as "wanted to work on other parts of the model." Since Invasion of Astro-Monster was set in the late 1960s, I wanted to give the Jeep a bit of an upgrade - the Planetary Defense should have access to better materiel than a bone stock 25-year-old leftover Jeep. At the very least, it should have an engine upgrade. So I swapped out the Go-Devil flathead for a Nissan L24 OHC from a Fujimi "Nostalgic Racer Tuning Parts" kit. It was a tight fit, but by cutting the firewall back a little, shortening the fan pulley, and replacing the Jeep radiator with the thinner piece from the Fujimi kit I was *just* able to get the straight six squeezed in there. I cut off the transmission snout and filed the side of the housing flat, which let me mount the Jeep's transfer case as it should have been with the Willy's transmission. The header pipes were unmodified from the Fujimi kit, but the rest of the exhaust system was hacked apart and rebuilt with kit parts, styrene rod, and metal tubing.

The new engine meant that I had to redo the driveshafts: a spare from my parts box (with smaller universal joints to miss the larger oil pan) for the front, and a bulked-up and shortened kit part for the rear. The rest of the chassis was built straight out of the box, though I did have to bend the steering arm up a little so that the drag link could clear the front axle. I also modified the wheels by removing the inner locator rings. These held the halves too far apart, so the edges of the wheels stuck out past the tires. By carving those off, the halves could fit tighter and give a better finished look.

In addition to moving the center panel of the firewall back and removing the lower radiator shelf so that I could fit the engine in place, I also made new headlight buckets by drilling out a set of spotlights left over from MPC's GMC kit. These fit the smaller Jeep headlights perfectly, and attached to the back of the grille with a small spot of glue. Under the hood, I scratch built a new upper radiator hose since the new layout meant that none of the stock Nissan connections would fit any more. The interior received new knobs for the three levers, as the kit parts never looked right to me. Finally, the recoilless rifle was built box stock other than the aforementioned barrel upgrade.

While I'm normally all about olive drab for my military Jeeps, I wanted to do something a little different here. I figure that part of the Planetary Defense's refit might include a new paint job, and the film used in the Godzilla movies made the Jeeps look really dark. The chassis and other accessories were painted Tamiya TS-29 semigloss black, and the body was painted TS-9 dark green. The engine was done in various metallic colors, and the gun was painted TS-38 Gun Metal with several different accent shades. Textured duct tape was used for the heat shielding, and a leftover license plate bracket painted TS-15 was used for the grille placard. The badge itself, along with the bumper markings, were provided in the kit and I added a set of custom info plates for the dashboard.

 

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