I'm interested in doing some early war German armor; but I've found there is little of it among the manufacturers I typically buy. Anyone have any recommendations?

Tamiya have a panzerII ausf G/F. I built this recently and its an OK little kit. Usual battery holes in the bottom and probably if your a aftermarket guy you definatly be buy tracks. I liked this and enjoyed building it. In just a few hours. It comes with five figure (very poor) and costs approx. $10.
Tristar have recently released a Panzer 1 and it got fairly good reviews. Might be worth checking out.
If you check back through the armor and rivet pages you will find build and pictures of both of these kits that were made recently!

ICM (also reboxed by Mirage) does a nice Panzer II "Luchs". Much better than the Tamiya one, although I did buy the Tamiya one recently for my 9 yr old daughter. She's going to build it while I build my ICM one. You can usually find the ICM one on eBay for $15ish, the Mirage one for slightly more, but it comes with some decent photoetch parts. Squadron sells the Tamiya one for $10, the ICM one for $19 and the Mirage one for $22. The last two come with single link track and the ICM one comes with a commander figure, I don't know if the Mirage one comes with the figure.

The other Panzer II I know of are the Ausf. F "Flamingo" or Flammpanzer. Alan and ICM make one, but I suspect they are the same kit with one reboxing the others. ICM lists it as the PzKpfw II Ausf. F Flamingo and Alan lists it as the SdKfz 122 Flammpanzer. Alan also sells the non-flame throwing variant PzKpfw Ausf. D.

Thanks alot. I think I'm going to pick up the ICM one and an Academy M10, after I finally getting around to finishing my King Tiger.

I just checked. As I thought, the Luchs was a later war development http://users.swing.be/tanks/engins2/40.html, rather than an early war tank.
The ICM kit was a fun build and looks relatively modern. I built the Tamiya G/F out of the box without instructions. Assembly (less filling the battery holes) took less than an afternoon.

Actually the ICM and Mirage kits are different. The Mirage kit is a rebox of the Techmod Luchs while the ICM one is totally different. Both are nice kits and both have their pluses and minuses.

As the Panzer II is one of my favorite German vehicles I know quite a bit about the kits there are:

Panzer II C = Alan (DML reboxes it too)
Panzer II D = Alan
Flammpanzer II D = Alan
Panzer II E = ICM
Flammpanzer II E = ICM
Panzer II F/G = Tamiya
Panzer II L = ICM
Panzer II L = Techmod (Mirage reboxes it too)
Panzer II J = Alan

These are the major kits. Cromwell models makes full resin kits of the Panzer II A and Panzer II B as well.

If you want a nice Panzer II go with the Allan/DML IIc it has its problems, but they are much easier to deal with than the Tamiya Pzkw II. I built that when I was about 9 and even then I realized it was crap. The one big issue I have with DML's II are the rear idlers, I'm still looking for an aftermarket set, so in its box it sits unbuilt.

Other early armor that isn't bad - Zvezda has a reboxing of Italieri's PzKw I which isn't bad (decals are crap), but im sure the tristar offering is much better.
Italiery also does a small SPG based on the Pzkw I which i hear can be made into a gem with a PE set.
You can also try out the various 38(t) and Skoda models offered by that one Czech company. They're kinda nice with some extra work.

Ralph

Actually, it is Italeri that reboxes the Zvezda kits. Zvezda made a line of kits based on the Panzer I Ausf. B chassis (Panzer I Ausf. B, Panzerjager I, and Panzerbefhelswagen I) and Italeri reboxed them. If you look at the bottom of each of their hulls it has the Zvezda emblem and the Italeri boxes also show the Zvezda emblem. The small SPG that you are talking about is the Panzerjager I which is a really nice kit and like you said with a set of Aber PE and some nice single link tracks (the kit comes with terrible rubber ones) that kit can be made into something beautiful.

Italeri has the Panzer Ib, I bult it and looks great with some work, specially in the weathering process. Another Panzer you can find is the Panzer II Luchs from Techmod, this one for me is better molded and with better details than the ICM kit and aldo it comes with photoechhed parts and a decal sheet with a lot of numbers that you can use in other kits.
Both are cheaper than the Tamiya kits.