M3 Scout Car English

Armor

Building the Israeli M3 Scout Car, from an Italeri kit

1/35 scale

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The M3 Scout Car(s) that Israel received from France and Italy together with the M2, M3, M5 and M9 half tracks in the early 50’s, would see service on several combats and also suffer many modifications.

Version

The Israelis had been accustomed to the armoured trucks. In fact, except for a couple of tanks, the trucks had been the best and only mean of transport of troops used by the fledgling Tazhal in 1948 during the Israeli War of Independence.

When they start to receive more second hand military material from European countries, they got into the habit of reconverting their vehicles.

This was the case of the Scout Cars, which though were initially used in the standard configuration, they ended seeing service completely renewed.

The kit

The kit is the old Italeri M3 Scout Car (ref: 231). There are divided opinions about it but suffice it to say that, in spite of its age, is a good base to work with.

The weakest points are the poorly detailed interiors (fairly spartan), the useless 0.30 guns and the small details. Anyway, it’s a buildable kit and, with love and aftermarkets, a good modeler can turn it into a worthy model. Thus, I faced my project, after all, my idea was to rebuild the 60% of the kit.

Assembly

Building a model from scratch is a singular pursuit, funny and creative. Besides with this kit it’s easier to make a conversion rather than building it out of the box, trying to correct all the mistakes.