In the early 1960’s, plastics were the wave of the future. The Marbon Chemical Company believed that plastic could be used for the structural parts of automobiles, and to demonstrate this they decided to build an entire car out of ABS plastic. The folks at AMT were so taken by this concept that they not only released kits of the car, but also committed to build a quantity of the full-scale vehicles. The most famous of these was used on the TV show “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”, where it served as the car driven by the main character and his sidekick, a pair of international spies.

The full-size cars never caught on, but the kits were popular, and Round 2 has recently re-released them. The first one out is the “Original Art Series” version of the “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” car, with original box art and a booklet full of color photos of the original vehicles, including the recently restored car from the TV series.

Eduard continues to expand its Bf 109E line, this time with a Weekend Edition of their E-7/Trop. The kit comes in 5 sprues (one clear), a “superfabric” seatbelt and two marking options. Recently Eduard has started to offer two markings options in their Weekend editions and I appreciate that.

Construction starts, as usual, with the cockpit. A simple affair to assemble it delivers a realistic representation of the “front office” of the 109 E-7. Decals are provided for the instrument panel or you can paint and drybrush it. Please note that I built this model using a photoetch fret (reviewed elsewhere in the IPMS/USA website), so the seatbelt shown in the image does not represent the “superfabric” one.

This spiffy little kit comes two to a box. There are 5 markings choices. This is the “out of the box” version review. I did the other half of the kit using the Brengun PE.

Major Assembly

Since this is the second of these, I gained a little experience with the first, and I learned something. Well, I actually knew this from before, and that’s the MiG-15 model is a tail-sitter, and you need to add weight to the front. On my Airfix 1/72 MiG-15, I had to put about 6 finish nails in the intake before it would sit on the nose wheel. For this kit, the amount of lead needed just fills the top of the intake splitter.

History

Among the variety of wheeled armored vehicles which saw action in WWII, the Sd.Kfz.234/2 – armed with a 5cm gun – boasted the strongest firepower. The Sd.Kfz. 234 series, which was developed as successor the 8 wheeled Sd.Kfz. 231, had an important role in reconnaissance missions for Blitzkreig tactics. Four variations from 234/1-4 were deployed with differing armament and the 234/2 was the first in this series. Unlike the 231, armored with plate bolted onto the frame, the 234 adopted a monocoque structure to improve productivity and strength. Controls were located in both ends and the front armor plate was 30mm thick. The Tatra-made Type 103 air-cooled V12 diesel yielded 210hp, a maximum speed of 80kn/h, and a range of 1000km. The chassis had sophisticated 8-wheel drive and 8 wheel steering mechanism. The turret was armed with the 5cm Kwk39/1 gun which was able to penetrate 37mm thick armor plate from a distance of 1500m with armor piercing ammunition.

Eduard has released a “Weekend” PE fret for their Bf-109E-7/Trop. This is a simple photoetch fret (13 parts) which will quickly enhance the look of your model.

The fret includes 4 pre-painted pieces to create a realistically looking instrument panel, a right side console (electric panel I believe), a nicely detailed seatbelt (5 pieces, prepainted too) and only one external piece, but an important one in the /Trop, as it is part of the air filter.

As you can see from the pictures, even with a low part number, this is a simple and effective way to enhance the interior and exterior of your model. It took me about 10 minutes to setup the interior pieces and less than one minute for the air filter. As all the interior pieces are pre-painted it is very straightforward to detail and complete the cockpit.

Highly recommended.

I would like to thank Eduard and IPMS/USA for the review sample.