HobbyBoss French VBL Armoured Car 1:35

[Mike]

French VBL Armoured Car
1:35 HobbyBoss

The VBL is France's answer to the light armoured car, which was quite forward-looking, as it was designed in the 80s with mine protection as one of the prime requirements along with efficiency, 4-wheel drive, NBC and small arms resistance. It was also engineered to amphibious and although it is by no means quick in the water, it still crosses rivers better than a HUMVEE if the bridge is out! As it is light, it is both fuel efficient and capable of being air dropped into the field, which makes it a very useful vehicle.

Introduced in the 90s it has gone on to see service in many hot zones both in France's former colonies as well as with the UN banner on its doors. A surprising number of derivatives and variants have been created to fulfil different subsections of the light armoured car role, which is facilitated by a number of different body shells, plus a lengthened chassis. VBL stands for Véhicule Blindé Léger, which translates directly to light armoured car, and it is made in France by Panhard, a company with experience in this market and now owned by automotive giant Renault.


The Kit
A new tool from HobbyBoss' prolific armour stable, and arrives in one of their standard tight-lidded corrugated cardboard boxes. Inside are six sprues in an olive styrene, plus three separately moulded parts in the same colour, nestling inside a card divide with four "rubber" tyres, a small decal sheet, two identical clear sprues, and a simple Photo-Etch (PE) sheet. The instruction booklet is standard black & white fare, as is the two sided colour and decal instruction sheet on glossy paper.

Detail in the box is excellent, with very complex mouldings of the upper and lower hull halves, the former having a nice texture on the anti-skid panels. Sliding moulds have been used throughout to improve detail, and you get a full crew-cab interior within the box, with the area forward of the firewall empty due to it being fully enclosed under access panels. These are supplied as separate parts however, so you could put your own power pack in there if you were minded.

The lower hull is first out of the box along with the wheels, which have two-part hubs and rubbery black tyres, and a good representation of the steering, suspension and drivetrain, much of which is covered by an armoured shroud at the rear. The wheels glue onto axle stubs, and the interior is then started, adding seats, driver controls, equipment fit in the forward cab initially, then moving back to the rear with more equipment in the roof space and on the small floor area. The exterior of the upper hull is closed up with access hatches, although any of them could be left open if you wished, with the caveat of the engine bay, which as mentioned earlier is bereft of detail. Pioneer tools, spare fuel cans and the roof-mounted machine-gun ring are then added, which is all done before joining the two halves, but would be best done after for ease and lack of broken fine parts. once they are joined up however, the two large side crew doors are detailed, glazed and added to the apertures in the sides, with another at the rear that is decked out with more gear. The rear light-clusters sit below the floorline, and are mounted in wedge-shaped boxes with clear lenses of each light, needing just a coat of clear paint of the appropriate shade.


Markings
There are four markings options in the box, and as usual HB don't tell you much about them. In this case they tell you nothing at all, so I’ll provide you with some visuals instead.

The decals are anonymously printed, and seem to have good register, colour density and sharpness, although the 4 in the orange circle looks a little too far over from an aesthetic point of view, but may mimic the real marking for all I know!


Conclusion
It's nice to see something unusual, and HB are prone to producing that from time-to-time. If you fancy something a little different from the modern Allied inventory, or have a fondness for French hardware, this should be right up your street.

AMMO have coincidentally just release a paint set for Modern French Armour (A.MIG 7151) that might come in very handy if you use acrylics.

Recommended.

Review sample courtesy of

[Panzer Vor!!!]

Thanks Mike great review I'll look out for one as got the Meng French tanks

Cute and cheerful kits for a weekend build

D

[jmc.pt]

Thanks for the review.

BTW, the third painting option (overall green/olive drab), as well as some of the decals, are intended to represent a Portuguese Army vehicle (licence plate MX-39-22).

Regards.

Edited May 11, 2016 by jmc.pt

[Mike]

Cool - thanks for that. it's difficult to come up with the info in a reasonable time-frame unless you have some familiarity with the units that use the VBL.

[Antoine]

The "Orange circle" should be the exact brown of the French NATO camo (French colours are not the same as the standard NATO camo).

Number 5 and 8 license plate is wrong IMO, The second and third figure shows the "in service" year for a given vehicle, so between about 90 (for 1990) and 16 (for 2016) for a VBL

Second option shows a Kosovo Protection Forces (KFOR), 0034 remind me of one of my platoon's vehicle during Kosovo 1999, got to check.

Fourth option present a United Nation Interim Forces in Lebanon.

Beside, from what I can see, it's looking good.

Is there a different machine gun for the Portuguese VBL? As I'm not sure they're also equiped with AN.F1.

[jmc.pt]

Hello Antoine

I´m not 100% sure but... from the photos I´ve seen, Portuguese VBLs have both MG-3s and .30 MGs in that position.

Edited May 11, 2016 by jmc.pt

[Antoine]

I know for sure about Greek VBL, that have a different set of self defense weapons, but I can't clearly remember Portugese VBL.

[AndyC]

I'll be buying one of these!

[luis pacheco]

Fortunately the Portuguese have long arms.

[Richard E]

There are some very interesting armour models being released at the moment.

I'm probably wrong, did one of the EU military monitoring or peace keeping groups use a number of bright orange VBLs on one of their missions at the beginning of this century ?