Introduction

The Steyr 100/200 Cabrio was a small, relatively fast (100km/h) car built by the Austrian manufacturer Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG from 1934 to 1940. I don’t know much about cars (most of my knowledge comes from Top Gear), so I can’t pretend I am an expert; this review focuses on the quality of the kit itself.

Contents

The model comes in the typical Hunor cardboard box- a pretty sturdy box that protects the fragile resin parts from damage. The individual parts are in Ziploc bags, with some packing peanuts thrown in. The PE fret is quite small, so to avoid it being misplaced, it is attached to the instruction manual with cellotape.

Review

The model is very small; the chassis and the undercarriage/seat come as individual pieces. Once you clean them off, they snap together; the fit is so good you don’t even need to use glue. The model is quite simple to assemble as the number of parts is small; we get four wheels, two alternate parts for the canvas top (one erected, one folded), and that’s pretty much it. There is a casting error on the folding canvas top; generally the quality of resin is good. The chassis has some really fine engraved lines depicting doors, panels, etc. The windscreen frame, the steering wheel and the stick for the manual transmission come as PE parts; you will need fine tweezers to handle them. The driver’s rear view mirror is missing; probably because it would be a very tiny part indeed. There are no clear parts provided, but in this scale I would not use them anyway. (Difficult to make realistic 1/72nd scale glass panels.) Due to the small scale the leaf spring suspension is not depicted, either; it would be hidden in any case.

The only issue I could find was the Steyr text on the radiator grilles; since the letters are only slightly raised details (and they are quite soft) it will be difficult to paint them well. Perhaps undercoating the grilles with silver and using a heavy black wash might be a solution. I’m not sure what the alternative would have been though; I think it would be equally difficult to deal with a tiny PE part instead.

The whole assembly including cutting the parts off the pouring block and cleaning them up took about an hour.

Conclusion

It’s an unusual (for me) kit of a really nice looking old car. While I do not know much about antique cars, it certainly is a good addition if you want to depict a civilian setting, use it as a staff car, add some “real life” details to dioramas, or simply want to build a small version of a cool-looking little car.