¹⁄35

Simca 5 Staff Car

Body

The body has only five parts, so is easy to assemble. I primed them with gray oil based primer, followed by a main coat of acrylic panzergrau. The canvas has no option but to be lowered. I primed it first with gray, and then airbrushed a black undercoat, followed by forest green acrylic as the main color. To show some weathering effect, the raised surfaced was dry brushed with green enamel, then a light wash was applied to reduce the overly stark contrast. The spare wheel which is attached at the rear of the body was painted in the same way as the running wheels. All together this stage was one of easy fitting and enjoyable painting.

Figure

One of the most delicate parts of the building is the figure. Fairly realistic and accurate, it still needs a steady hand and eagle eye due its scale. I assembled the head and lower body to the upper torso section, leaving the hands to last, to make sure I got a good fit on the seat and to the steering wheel. The whole figure was primed gray. Next step was painting the face and head details: hair, eyes, ears using different tones of the same color and a wet-on-wet technique with acrylics. The uniform was painted entirely feldgrau, followed by shadows and highlights. The details were reproduced with appropriate colors; I found it very difficult to paint the Iron Cross ribbon and the epaulettes, but I was pretty satisfied with the result upon completion.

Weathering and completion

I wanted to depict a vehicle at the beginning of the war (perhaps before the French campaign) so I decided to apply light weathering, as these small vehicles were used mostly by HQ or back line military, away from the front. I applied it in two steps only: a light dry brushing to pick up details and show some degradation of the paint, and then I applied chalk weathering to show up some dust effect. Finally I painted the rear lamps in red and added custom made license plates.

Acknowledgements and conclusions

I would like to thank the good people from Kit Maker community who provided me with their support: James Bella, Jim Starkweather, Darren Baker, Sven Harjacek and Jesper Bjerregaard. Also to my friends who are supporting me: Felix, Corina and Grace. Special thanks to Vero, who is entitled as the owner of the completed model.

This is a very flexible kit which can easily be completed OOB as I did, or could support extended re-working, as I have seen on a masterful diorama still under development, as published on the Armorama forum.