Italeri 1/35 Sd.Kfz.232 6 Rad German Armored Car Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

The Sd.Kfz.232 6 Rad armored scout car was produced in the 1930s for the German Army. Only a limited number were ever produced, yet the experience gained with these vehicles made them a valuable stepping stone towards the development of later models.

The Sd.Kfz.232 was used right up until the early stages of WWII when it was replaced by more modern, efficient armored cars. It featured a three-axle chassis with double rear tires, light amour and a 20mm cannon. The unique towel rack frame above the turret is an HF radio antenna.

We had the pleasure of reviewing this kit back in May 2005 when it was released as kit number 6433. What has changed?

Italeri has re-released this kit with a nice interior cast in tan resin plus the addition of a few photo-etched parts to round out the improvements.

Inside the kit are 4 trees of dark gray styrene parts, the decal sheet, a bag of resin parts, the photo-etched part fret, decals and instructions.

Construction begins with the interior which is all new. The resin floorboard has seats and controls for the front and rear drivers' positions. The front driver's position also has a nice instrument panel from a combination of photo-etch and acetate instrument faces.

A six-cylinder engine comes next, also case from resin and it is detailed with a radiator assembly, air filter, exhaust manifold and other details. This sits ahead of the crew compartment and will be visible through the open hood panels.

Once the interior and engine compartment are complete, the remainder of the kit goes together like the previous release. An alternate spare wheel and tire are provided in resin.

The towel rack antenna can be glued into place, though that would fix the position of the turret. The kit does replicate the swivel point for the turret-to-antenna frame nicely, so you can leave this point unglued if you can carefully move the completed model about.

As with the previous release, markings are included for:

• A 232 of the 2nd Panzer Division – France 1940
• A 232 of the 3rd Panzer Division – France 1940
• A 232 of an unknown unit – Poland 1939
• A 232 of an unknown training unit – Germany 1937

As this vehicle's use was limited to early war operations, it wore a standard panzer gray overall color scheme.

While the MSRP of $100 USD might give some modelers pause, those die-hard AMS modelers that would want to detail out the interior of this kit could easily spend that much (or more) on aftermarket sets to achieve the same results. For those modelers that are content to model the exterior of the vehicle only, there is still kit number 6433 available which is the same kit without the resin and photo-etched parts.

My sincere thanks to Testors for this review sample!