Introduction

The Opel automotive manufacturer can trace its roots back to 1862, building its first automobile in 1899. The Opel Admiral began manufacturing in 1937 as a luxury car in Germany, being shown for the first time at the 1937 Berlin Motor Show. The car was manufactured until 1939, when Opel was ordered to start producing trucks for the military.

The four-door sedan was the standard body on the Admiral, but people with extra money could order the Cabriolet body of this luxury car. Now this fine looking automobile has been reproduced by ICM Holding in 1/24 scale.

Contents

For a 1/24 scale kit, I had expected a bigger box, but opening it, I found it just stuffed with parts in two separate plastic bags and an instruction booklet. Inside the box you will find the following:

• 5 sprues of grey molded plastic
• 1 sprue of chromed plastic parts
• 1 sprue of clear plastic
• 4 rubber tires
• Instructions
• Small sheet of decals

Review

Being mostly a 1/35 scale armor guy, it has been a long time since I have looked into a 1/24 scale car kit box, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. The parts are molded in a grey plastic, and looks to be well molded. I found little to no flash, no sink marks, and it looks that all ejector pin marks will be covered during the assembly.

Being a bigger scale kit, the parts are not as small, but there is still a couple fine parts to deal with. For a larger scale model I would have expected sharper detail molded into the larger parts, as I found most of the molded detail to be a little soft.

The kit does include a full frame and engine to build. While there is quite few parts to the engine, it does scream to add the wiring and plumbing in this scale. The same would be said for the undercarriage. The frame and axles are also assembled from multiple parts and should look very good once assembled. And does include the holes in the frame parts.

The kit also includes a full interior which also looks like it will build up well. Being a cabriolet kit, ICM Holding only provides the option for the top being down. This may give builder a reason to add some extra detail to the interior. The kit does provide decals for the dash, but I would look to source an aftermarket set if you could, I will talk more about the decals later. Again I did find some of the interior detail to be a little soft, including the interior door panels that could be done better.

The exterior looks good including pre-chrome parts. While most of the chromed parts look good, I did find bubbles in the chrome coating on the front grill and molding seam are showing on a lot of the parts and will be in need of clean up, thus requiring the chrome to be touched up. This is especially true for the front and rear bumpers. While some examples of the real vehicle do have a center ridge running the length of bumpers, the chrome plating over the seam does not look realistic. I would suggest that the chrome be stripped, the parts cleaned, and redone with paint like Alclad Chrome paint. The kit does include clear parts for the windshield and window, but does include some molded on detail that will also need to be masked and painted chrome as well. Another issue I found with the kits is the door are molded shut as part of the body side, and a lot of work would be required to cut and position them open.

Also included in the kit are rubber like tires, while the tire include a nice tread pattern, the molding seam goes around the outside of the tire, and is not always the easiest to remove from poly parts.

The decals that were included in my example are poorly printed for the scale. There is little to no detail in the decals, and showing a lot of bleeding of the colors. While the decals for the plates might be usable, the decals for the dash and flag are unusable.

A review of the instructions seem to show well organized and well laid out assembly steps. The instructions follow a very similar path, starting with the engine and frame, moving onto the interior, then finishing up the exterior and mating of the body with the frame. The kit does include marking and schemes for four different vehicles, with three being the traditional black. There are paint call outs through the instructions referring to Model Master colors.

Conclusion

Overall this looks to be a great subject in a larger scale and not a total bad kit, but ICM has missed the mark on a few items. Most of the molded details are soft, the pre-chromed parts will need to be redone, and the builder would be better off sourcing decals from another source. This would be a great kit for a model car fan of that era, but it will require some extra work to build a great looking model.