Italeri’s Tankwagen is the latest in a long line of kits based on the Opel Blitz originally released in the 1970s. If you’ve built any of these, you’ll find little new here. One of the three sprues is new to this kit; the rest are from previous releases, supplying you with plenty of extras for your spare-parts box. Because of the aged molds, there are mold seams, flash, and ejector-pin marks to clean up, but nothing posing a major problem. Sprue A is not labeled, so the parts list is a must.
Construction is straightforward, starting with the frame and suspension. In Step 3, the trailer-hitch mounting bracket is not numbered; it should be 28B. The front wheels are free to turn if you take care assembling the front axle. The tires are vinyl, devoid of detail, and several of mine are already cracking. There is play in the gas tank’s placement, so I left it off until the cab was glued to the frame after painting so it didn’t interfere with the cab.
As with the other kits in this series, the cab and bonnet construction are the most difficult. I skipped Step 5 (cab interior) and went right to Step 6, the bonnet and front-fender assembly, firming it up by gluing Part 10C (the windshield) to it. The hood tie-downs are not shown in the directions but are included as parts 16A (they are shown in the box art).
I left the seat, gearshift, steering wheel, and dashboard out of the interior to make painting easier. The seat has no detail; it will look better if you at least give it some kind of texture. There are two floorboards included in the kit; make sure you have the right one, Part 30A. The cab interior has some surface imperfections to sand. I glued the doors and floor to the rear of the cab at the same time to make sure everything lined up. Once this assembly was dry enough to handle, I glued it to the bonnet and added all the accessories.
The license plate was not numbered (it is Part 53A). There is a small T-shaped piece on the driver’s-side fender that is not numbered in Step 10; it is found on the A sprue, but is shown as not being used.
The fuel tank went together with no problems. I glued Part 1C to the fuel tank, not to the frame as shown in Step 7. You have the option of leaving the doors open on the rear of the tank to show all the pipes and valves of the pump. I chose to close the doors because I did not have a good photo of the area to paint it accurately.
In Step 11, Part 28B should be labeled 28C. The taillights lacked detail, so I drilled them out and added Kristal Klear for lenses. The cab, frame, tank, tires, and spare-tire rack were all left as subassemblies for easier painting.
You have three choices of vehicle colors: dark yellow; Panzer gray; and dark yellow with green camouflage. I chose the last, painting with Tamiya dark yellow, Tamiya
J.A. green, and Humbrol German green. There was some silvering of the decals, likely due to my preparation of the model. I weathered with Mig Productions washes, filters, and pigments, and dry-brushing.
At the last, I glued together the subassemblies, drilled out the end of the tailpipe, added the muffler, then installed the windows. The clear parts are precut on an adhesive backing; all you have to do is pull them off the sheet.
This enjoyable build gives us something different in “soft-skin” vehicles. It took only 18 hours to build, most of it painting and weathering. Adding resin tires, Archer gauges, some seat detail, and some of the aftermarket photoetched-metal parts made for the other kits in this series would make this Tankwagen terrific.