Opal Blitzbus ‘StraBenzepp Essen’

[richellis]

Opal Blitzbus ‘StraBenzepp Essen’

1:72 injection moulded kit from Roden

The Opal Blitz is a light truck that was produced between 1930 and 1975 at the Ludewig plant in the city of Essen. Although it was classed a light truck it found many uses, including as a bus and Roden have expanded their range with this very nice looking streamlined version, with a body that was designed with aerodynamics in mind, and refined in a wind tunnel it made a strange looking bus for its time! The body was designed and built by Ludewig Brothers on the Opal 3 ton chassis.

Most of these buses where used on promotional activities showing off how advanced and forward thinking the German automotive industry was at the time and they were also used extensively during the 1936 Olympic games to transport foreign guests.

The kit has been designed with the truck chassis, engine and running gear on its own sprue; I presume this will allow different versions on the Blitz chassis to be tooled. The parts are very nice, with both engraved and raised detail. The louvers on the sides of the bonnet are very well done in this small scale, there is a very small amount of flash on the prop-shaft and the exhaust and care will be needed not to break the delicate parts, other than that its clean.

The chassis and running gear is the same as in previous releases, I have taken a photo to show the chassis parts, they come over 3 sprues and are well moulded with very fine surface detail.

The body work for the bus comes on a single sprue and looks nice, but will need some work to clean up some flash on the parts but the surface detail is nice and the raised strips will help with painting the scalloped livery worn by these buses. I have shown a closer picture to show some of the detail,

As I said some work will be needed with the sanding stick, but it shouldn’t take too long to get the body together. I thought some of the details where a bit heavy but looking at the limited information on the net it doesn’t look that out of place, there was a lot of chrome strip over the body!

The seats for the interior come over 3 light grey sprues and have engraved lines on the seat to show the stitching detail on the real seats, although a touch deep should look ok when under some paint A closer shot is shown below,

The bus interior is split into 2 sections, with a lounge area at the rear with large sofa style seats, and in the front section single chairs along the centre at an angle looking out.

A small decal sheet with a couple of sliver stripes for the body and a pair of registration plates, and a clear sheet of plastic with the window surrounds printed on in black for you to cut out.

The instructions a a printed black and white booklet with clear diagrams on part placement, and the painting instructions are in colour on the rear of the box.

Conclusion

This is another nice bus model from Roden. The streamlined body and VIP interior make a nice change from the drab war era military versions! Some bits are not the best casting I have seen from Roden, so expect a bit of clean up on some parts of the body, but otherwise, a nice kit!

Review sample courtesy of