A few months ago, I was getting ready to start on a 1/72 Mustang kit and I thought, "why not do a comparison between three of them?". So I gathered together three kits that I had in my stash; an Academy P-51B, A Revell AG P-51B and a Tamiya P-51D. This basically covers the three price extremes on the subject with the Revell being the least expensive at $4.75 (at the time I bought it), the Academy priced at $10.00 and the Tamiya kit was $16.00 MSRP.

Let us start with the interior. All of them have interiors of a quality higher than the old raised panel line days with proper seats, radio gear and detail on the side walls. The Revell kit has the softest detail and the Tamiya one has the most crisply done. Interestingly, all had different shape seats and all had the radiator exhaust upper plate molded into the cockpit floor section. You will also see that the Academy and Tamiya radio sections are the most similar. I should also point out that the Tamiya kit has a seat belt decal, a nice addition.

Moving on to the fuselages, there are a few differences there as well, aside from the canopies, which I'll touch on a bit later. From the upper surface, there seems to be no problems or differences aside from one being a P-51D. Well, the fit of the Revell kit isn't the best of the lot as it needed more filler than the others, but that isn't unusual. I was also less than thrilled with the separate tail on the Academy kit, but it was the way that they designed the thing. On the underside,  however, there are some things to note. First, the Revell kit is the only one of the three that does not have molded on tail wheel doors. The shape of the radiator intake is a bit different in all three with the Academy kit being a bit more rounded and the Revell one having the edges a bit more sharp. Moving to the front, the intakes are all a tad different as well. The Academy one is much wider than the others with the Tamiya version being a bit flatter and wider than what is provided by Revell, but not as distinctly different as the Academy variant.

Now to the wings. A few things I noticed. One is that Academy seems to have also followed Hasegawa's lead by having the 'kink' in the leading edge near the fuselage more like that of a D than a B. The P-51B/C does have a wider section near the fuselage for the wheels, but it is rather subdued when compared to the P-51D. Revell seems to have this down better than Academy. Also, the shell ejection chute on the two P-51Bs is a different size on the two kits. Not sure who is right, but I'm leaning towards Revell.

So how about some of the smaller bits and pieces. Well, let's take a look at the wheels that are provided in the various kits. All are supposed to be basically the same, but even here we see differences.

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