Matthew Lenton takes a look at the latest in Dragon's small scale series of 8 wheeled heavy armoured cars, Sd.Kfz.231 Schwere Panzerspähwagen (8 Rad).



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Thanks!

Matthew,

Very concise and effective review of this kit. Interesting how Dragon is recycling spruces in the same manner as the did with their recent four wheeled Spahpanzers. I am very happy to see that they are now providing some optional "full" number sets for these vehicles, as opposed to the digit by digit only option. I've had the displeasure to do three sets of these "roll your own" type plates and they are a monumental time consuming drudgery. As I have a 263 version awaiting construction, I will most certainly be referring to the excellent reviews here on this site. My thanks to you and others that provide these helpful reviews.

Cheers,
Jan

Thanks Jan. Looking forward to your long-promised rendering of the 263 Dependent on any competition rules that you might want to comply with, it would be interesting to try to get some of the thin components down to more in-scale thickness.
Regarding the "recycling" - this one is a bit disappointing in terms of there being no new components at all; I'm not sure if that has happened in any other kits in the range, or indeed in the 1/35 range. Still, in the "old days" of course, modellers might have been forced to create all of the 8rad vehicles from a single base kit, such as the infamous Airfix SdKfz234, so at least Dragon are leaving a bit of work for us to do...

In time, Matthew, in time. I haven't really looked at the kit parts except in your review pictures to see what might be doable. If it will potentially be entered in an OOTB category then the options are extremely limited.




I'm sure that we've seen this quite often by now, including the "Lego" scale kits. The Dragon Shermans, Panzer IV chassis, T-34 variants and especially the four wheeled (4 Rad) vehicles. This latter most category has the kits come with a large sprue that contains a huge number of parts that are specific to the 222 variant including the full interior and exterior of that versions turret. As another example, the SU-85M came with numerous parts for an early T-34. including the entire upper body casting as can be seen as marked unused in the instructions below.






Would it be unrealistic to presume that we might see a slew of 234 variants from Dragon! Perhaps even a Puma?

Cheers,
Jan

Jan, though it is certainly commonplace for kits to be created from other kits by adding sprues in, and leaving the whole other kit contained within the new, I suppose the point with this one is that the 232 was released first, and that to make the 231, parts were subtracted, rather than added. I suppose it's no different really, though seems a little odd when you think about it that way.

Of course Airfix released their Mark I Male around 47 years before getting around to adding the sprue for the Female - but the Male costs less than the Female as it contains less plastic; these Dragon kits cost the same as each other.




I think it's inevitable; notice that the wheels and suspension arms are on a sprue of their own, separate from the wheel arches which will need to be replaced by the one piece fenders for the 234. On top of that, they just released the 1/35 Sd.Kfz.234/4 Panzerspähwagen this month, which means they've got all the CAD drawings done for that, and recently they have been following up 1/35 with 1/72 (like the Panzerfahre )