The Little World

One day I met a man at a fair and he was selling magic beans…

Okay. I confess. I’m bean stalking you. It wasn’t at the fair, it was at the model club. And he wasn’t selling magic beans – he was selling unwanted kits from Poland. A big cardboard box of what may have been the booty from a Warsaw swap meet. Lots of 1:72 planes – mostly Karas models from Heller – and some armour. The prices were extremely cheap, even by swap meet standards – a dollar per kit. I picked up two more Karas and this little armoured car.

It is entirely out of my experience and scale – but I recently thought up a way to do armour models in 1:35 that would be fun and not a weathered mess. So why not risk a dollar and see what happens.

The kit looks good inside – four sprue trees in hard gray plastic, a decal sheet, a colour call-out, and a clear set of diagrams. The paint specs are probably Vallejo, but can be translated to Gunze easily enough.

And the internet has what I really want – the sight of a modern-day preserved or reconstructed car in colour. In this case there are several of them re-made and taking part in Polish military historical displays. I think I shall be able to copy a real example as far as possible.

The nice thing about a museum copy is that it is clean and neat, and the amount of weathering and dirt is absolutely minimal. I shall build it as the first exhibit in my vehicle collection; Stein’s Military Museum. No touching the displays, please and the refreshment stand is in the foyer.