MiniArt Austin Armoured Car 3rd Series (39010) 1:35

[Mike]

Austin Armoured Car 3rd Series (39010)

1:35 MiniArt via Creative Models Ltd

 

 

Armour became an important part of WWI, seeing the first fielding of the Tank by the British, and numerous types of armoured car that saw various uses.  At the beginning of WWI Austin’s armoured car was built on their civilian chassis, with light armour and two Maxim machine guns in separate turrets, one firing to each side, front and rear.  Many were destined for Russia, but after the Russian Revolution in 1917 some of the later variants were used in British service.  Of course, during missions some would fall into enemy hands due to abandonment or breakdown, just as the tanks did, so they were occasionally found with big crosses on them after some re-branding by the Germans.  The third series of armoured cars had some alterations made to improve their usage, including deleting windows, putting bullet-resistant glass in the front vision ports, and small armoured sheets to the sides of the machine guns to prevent their cooling jackets from being holed by incoming rounds. A few of the 3rd series were sent to the Russians before they bailed out of the war due to the revolution, and they in turn gave a couple to the Finnish Red Army, but they were captured and used by the Finnish Army instead.  Later, a batch of 1918 Pattern vehicles were manufactured for Russia, but were never delivered, with a batch handed to the newly formed Tank Corps, to be utilised in battle using a novel method of deployment.  Tanks would tow them across the battlefield through no-man’s land, after which they would peel off and roam freely along and even behind enemy lines.  They caused chaos and were almost too effective, ranging miles behind enemy lines at times, occasionally breaking down or getting otherwise captured, but they set the scene for the Armoured Car and Infantry Fighting Vehicle of wars yet to come. 

 

At the end of the Great War some were returned to the UK and repurposed, but many that were formerly in Russian possession found their way into the inventory of other Eastern European countries, and a small batch were even used by the Japanese, who were British Allies in WWI.  Some of those were still in service up until just before WWII, and the Finnish used their few into the 20s.

 

 

The Kit

This is another reboxing of MiniArt’s recently tooled base kit, with new parts to accurately portray the third series included, including the new side panels, vision ports and wheels.  It arrives in standard-sized top-opening box with a painting of the vehicle on the front, and inside are nineteen sprues in grey styrene, a sprue of clear parts, a small fret of Photo-Etch (PE) in a card envelope, a decal sheet and the instruction booklet that has colour profiles inside the front and rear covers.  It’s an Interior kit, so some of the sprues are small, but you get a lot of detail moulded-in, thanks to MiniArt’s diligent designers that make full use of techniques such as slide-moulding, which helps improve detail without creating too many additional parts in achieving this goal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Construction begins with the ladder chassis, which is built up from two longitudinal rails held apart by various cross-members, some of which have mounting points and pass-throughs for other parts such as drive-shafts for the rear wheels.   The engine has its own bearer rails, and it is built up on the sump with a good number of parts, resulting in a nice replica.  The transmission fits to the rear of the rails behind the engine, then they are dropped into the chassis as a unit, and joined by a number of ancillary parts, controls and a chunky radiator that mates with its feeder pipes.  Exhaust and leaf-spring suspension along with bumper irons are glued to the inverted chassis, and the rest of the driver controls are attached to the topside, even before the cab is started.  The rods that turn control movements into actions are threaded through the chassis rails, or can be replaced by 0.3mm wires of your own stock, with PE tensioning mechanisms supplied if you choose this option.  The big rear axle with drum brakes and the front axle with steering arms are fabricated and attached to their relevant suspension mounts, with more control linkages for the handbrake and steering joining things together.

 

 

Finally, a little bodywork is attached, initially at the sides of the engine compartments in preparation for the gluing of the swooping front arches, then each axle gets a wheel at both ends, made up from single-part hubs at the front, and rear which also gets a circular PE ring, onto which the four radial-treaded tyres are fitted, each one having a seam in the centre of the tread, which should be removed carefully to preserve tread detail.  Now standing on her own four wheels, the floor of the fighting compartment and the crew cab plus the firewall and various small fittings are placed on the top of the chassis, with another insert providing the bases for the two turrets that have pivot-points in the centre for the machine gun mounts.  Various stowage boxes are made up and sat next to the rear steering wheel assembly that was added for this variant, and also has a simple seat for the new crew member who would get them out of hot water and dead-ends just that little bit easier.  Two similar crew seats are attached to the front along with steps at the sides, then the somewhat complex upper hull is built sensibly in a step-by-step fashion that stops the modeller from becoming over-faced.  Several raised features should be removed from parts before fitting, and additional rivets are shown being added in various other locations, which you can slice from the flat section of the two Ck sprues, unless you’ve got a set of Archer raised rivet transfers.  The crew flap can be posed open to give a wider view of the battlefield for the drivers by using two lengths of rod, and when in battle it can be closed down, restricting the driver to a letterbox view of the world, which although frustrating is infinitely better than being shot in the face.  Plenty of scrap diagrams show the correct orientations of all the parts, so there’s little room for error unless you rush at it and don’t plan ahead.  The hull has a number of doors that can be posed open and closed too, with vision flaps for additional situational awareness, and again there is a lot of hand-holding to get things in the right place, and a number of PE parts to add more detail.  A single headlight is fitted to the front, and a searchlight that flips up from inside the turrets on a flap to protect them from incoming bullets, both with clear lenses for realism.  Even the radiator has a remotely operated armoured cover, as an engine overheating on the battlefield could become troublesome if the flap stays closed too long.  The side-cowlings for the engine compartment can also be posed open or closed, and have small PE straps holding them closed.  With the addition of the rear fenders, the hull/body is lowered over the chassis.

 

To begin the turrets, you build up a mount for the either a Maxim, Schwarzlose or MG-08 machine gun, including a tractor-style perforated seat for the operator and a large ammo can to feed the gun, which is fitted into a cradle mount that is inserted inside the turret later on.  A few more of those slice-off rivets are glued to the sides of the two turret halves, mainly for detail purposes, as adding moulded-in rivets to a curved part is very difficult, and results in a poor results due to the way the parts are removed from the inflexible metal moulds.  A pair of armoured plates are installed on either side of the gun port to protect it from harm, with PE brackets holding them square to the barrels.  The roof is detailed with latches, the pop-up searchlights on PE brackets and other small fittings can be fitted open or closed as you see fit.  The machine gun mount is inserted from below, taking care to slip the barrel through its port first, then gluing the two ends of the lateral cradle supports onto the inner wall of the turret.  There are two turrets included that are handed so that the searchlight flap is on the outer side, and these drop into the circular cut-outs in the roof of the fighting compartment, held in place by gravity unless you fix them into position with a little glue.

 

 

Markings

There are a generous five decal options on the decal sheet, with their four-view profiles printed in full colour on the glossy pages of the booklet, and they are all either green or grey, depending on operator and time of service.  From the box you can build one of the following:

 

• Armoured Car Platoon 1, Royal Prussian Army, Kyiv, Ukraine, Spring 1918
• Armoured Car Platoon 3, Royal Prussian Army, France, Autumn 1918
• Austro-Hungarian Army, Italy, Summer 1918
• Finnish Red Guard, Battle for Helsinki, Finland, April 1918
• Finnish White Guard, Finland, Helsinki, 1919

 

 

 

Decals are by MiniArt's usual partners Decograph, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin matt carrier film cut close to the printed areas.

 

 

 

Conclusion

Another cool-looking WWI Austin Armoured Car, which saw service with many different armies in a relatively short period.

 

Highly recommended.

 

 

Review sample courtesy of

[JohnT]

Mike?  You sure they’re not straight out of Pixar’s next “Cars” cartoon movie?  
 

Well you can’t say it lacks character. What is it about WW1 tanks, armoured cars and ships that just ooze period “something”?  Not sure what the right word is. 
 

All in all it looks a cool little model and one that I suspect might have general appeal beyond AFV modellers

[Mike]

24 minutes ago, JohnT said:

You sure they’re not straight out of Pixar’s next “Cars” cartoon movie?  

Put a big googly eye on each turret, and you could be right.