Steyr ADGZ, Hobby Boss 1/35 scale, kit review
Hi everyone and welcome to the kit review of the Steyr ADGZ M35 medium armored car by Hobby Boss in 1/35 scale.
This armored car was developed in Austria in the 1930´s for the Austrian Army and Police.
After the joining of Austria in 1938 the vehicles saw service in the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS.
There are a few very famous pictures of such vehicles taken in Danzig on 1st September 1939 during the battle for the Danzig post office.
Very famous footage indeed. If i remember correctly these vehicles belonged to the Danzig Home Defense group.
Only a few dozens of these vehicles were built as far as i know. It was not the most common vehicle.
However, there are many pictures of these and this legitimates a plastic injection kit of this unusual vehicle more than enough.
Few years ago AMG released a plastic injection kit of the vehicle as well.
It is very expensive and the level of detail is not really impressive as far as i know.
The AMG kit costs about 90€, which is more than twice as expensive as this one here.
Let´s have a look inside the box. As you can see the box is not very big.
Usually there are two sprues in one bag. This should be good enough, because the box itself is very robust. There should be no damage during the shipping.
Let´s have a look at the instructions first. On the front page we have a few safety notes in English and Chinese, a legend to symbols and instructions for the handling of decals.
Next there is a sprue map, can be handy just in case you have to look something up.
Then the assembly starts with the axles. Usually this is the most tricky thing on an armored car.
It continues with the lower hull. Everything is clearly arranged. Only few parts are used in each step. Should be easy to follow.
Here we install the acess hatches on the lower hull. There are more on the upper hull.
In theory you could build them opened up, but the hinges are molded on the hatch and there is no interior at all.
This means you can only build the hatches closed up, unless you put a lot of effort into building some visible parts of the interior yourself.
There we use some photo-etched parts for better detail.
We continue with the wheel assembly.
A few of these polycaps are used here. These plastic caps allow it to simply plug on the wheels. I think they are pretty handy, because you do not have to glue the wheels on.
The assembly of the upper hull is a bit more tedious. A lot of small parts get installed here.
You also have an option here, you can chose between two side visors.
Here are the acess hatches on the upper hull. As we have seen on the lower hull we can only put them on in closed position.
These ventilation flaps for the engine get installed individually. This means you can position them the way you want. Open, closed or somewhere in between. That is quite neat.
Here we put on more small bits and pieces like headlights and jerry cans. Then we add the tools.
The hull machine guns are complete, so they are the only interior details on this kit. There is nothing besides them.
There are some photo-etched parts for the headlight guards.
Everything is clearly arranged here, nothing seems to be incomprehensible or extremely complex.
The turret assembly is just one assembly step, there is not really much to it.
Again there is no interior detail for the turret, which is a shame due to the very big hatch on the roof.
However, you have to compare it with the AMG kit. The Hobby Boss kit is way cheaper and the AMG kit does not come with an interior either.
I can already see some aftermarket resin companies offering a full interior kit for this vehicle at some point.
Hobby Boss suggests five painting and marking options. This is quite exceptional, because normally they suggest only one or two vehicles. I like the variety here.
The first vehicle named "Ostmark" (old fashioned German name for Austria) saw service in the SS.
As i mentioned earlier already this was one of the vehicles that took part in the assault on the Danzig post office. Pretty famous vehicle.
The other variants do not ring a bell right now, maybe they are documented with pictures. I do not know further details here.
The options are not specified at all. All of them are painted grey, with the exception of the last one which has some dark brown camo blotches.
On the bottom we have a paint chart refering to Mr. Hobby, Vallejo, Model Master, Tamiya and Humbrol. A sensible choice of paint brands in my opinion.
I like that Hobby Boss gives us painting and marking guides in full color. You see right away what you are going for and it does not involve any decoding of paint numbers.
Let´s move on to the plastic parts. Here we have the lower hull. Looks pretty nice to me.
There are not many details visible here, but most of it gets glued on later, like axles and so on.
You can see here the left-overs of the gating. Besides the gatings there is nothing to clean up.
Should work pretty nicely, because the gatings are located on good spots. Just shave them off with a knife, sand over the area and thats it.
The part is not twisted at all and pretty robust. It will be a good basis for the model.
Same applies to the upper hull section. Again we have these gatings which are easy to remove.
There are a few ejection pin marks which can be visible later. They are easy to remove in case they annoy you.
The ejection pin marks on the interior side do not have to bother us since there is no interior at all.
There is some nice rivet detail on the roof here.
As we have seen already in the instructions there will be a lot of detail added by using various small parts that go on the upper hull.
This sprue is included twice and features mainly running gear parts, jerry cans and the access hatches.
The mold is very crisp.
There are only few connection points to the sprue. It will alleviate the cleaning up process of the parts.
There are some pretty filigree parts, too. Looks very decent.
Having the leave springs split in two halves is not the most clever way of molding the part.
Filling and sanding the little gap between the two halves can be pretty tedious work. Not very clever.
However, a lot of it will be covered by the wheels later.
Let´s have a look at the sprue up close.
Sweet wing nut detail here. Nice.
I like what i see here. Typical for Hobby Boss.
This sprue here is also included twice. It holds the wheel rims, armament and headlight parts.
The details are crisp for the most part. I have seen better machine guns though, maybe you want to replace them with a spare part. Dragon makes very nice MG34s.
On this sprue we have parts for the turret, bits and pieces that go on the upper hull and the cardan shaft for the lower hull.
As always there are only few connection points to the sprue, so i assume that building this kit should be a fairly quick affair. There is really not much to it.
The absence of an interior saves time of course, but the detail fanatics won´t like it.
The turret is very smooth, all parts do lack a bit of steel texture.
You can score the parts yourself if you want that, for example with Mr. Surfacer.
The parts are very crisp and there is no flash at all. That is the principal thing here. The base-quality of the parts is excellent, adding the texture yourself is not that hard.
The kit comes with a few clear parts for the headlights as well. There is not really much to say about that. They are rather clear and very shiny.
Here are the polycaps, as i mentioned already they will be part of the tires.
They allow it to simply plug on the wheels, no glue is required.
It is also possible to take off the wheels again (for example to paint or weather them), which is pretty handy.
Of course you could build the model without them, but i do not mind it to have them.
The kit comes with many rubber tires. Not everyone likes these and i admit that they have several disadvantages.
The tires in this kit have very tread pattern and do not require any clean-up at all. There is no flash on them or any other blemish. Very nice.
I assume that experts will look for resin tires to replace these.
These rubber tires loose their softeners over the years which makes them brittle. Sometimes the tires melt a bit and stick on the shelf. I have seen that happening.
It is not a thing that will look amazing in a couple of decades.
However, they are more than good for the ordinary model builder and i´ll use these tires for sure on my model.
The photo-etched parts are protected with such a plastic foil on both sides. I remove one to give you a better view.
There are not many PE parts, but most of them are very useful. I think most people won´t have much trouble using them.
Whether or not you fancy to use these tiny hooks down here is up to you.
The headlight grids or the braids for the jerry cans are nice additions to the kit which will enhance the level of detail.
The decal sheet is pretty opulent. Some of the markings are split in several parts already.
These will go over a hatch for example. This means we do not have to cut the markings ourselves. Very handy!
I notice that the carrier film is very big here, maybe you can see it glaring. This can cause some problems, but not necessarily.
I advice you to remove the carrier film as much as possible with a sharp blade. Otherwise the decals may look like stickers on your model.
My experiences with Hobby Boss decals are not the best. Maybe the decals improved a bit over the years.
A final verdict can only be made after i used the decals. My impression right now is "okay".
In my opinion it is a pretty solid kit. It allows you to build a nice model without too much hassle.
The amount of parts is not very big, so i think beginners could handle this kit, too.
The kit does not feature any kind of interior detail. I bet one or the other is annoyed by this and i have to admit that i mind it a bit as well.
The vehicle has several of these big access hatches on the hull and turret, so at least a rudimentary interior would have been nice.
There is literally no interior detail at all, which is a shame.
The kit costs about 40€, which is a bit too much for what you get. 30€ would have been okay.
40€, well, that is too much. It should have some interior detail for 40€ in my opinion. Of course i did not know this when i bought the kit a while ago.
Anyway, one has to say that this kit is certainly better in my ways than the AMG kit.
The AMG kit costs more than twice as much and is definately not a gem of a kit either.
I have no doubt that the Hobby Boss kit builds up very nicely and has the edge.
Besides the unusual subject itself i appreciate the five painting and marking options suggested by Hobby Boss.
This is uncommon for Hobby Boss. I built one or the other Hobby Boss kit in the past and there were usually one or maybe two painting and marking options.
Here you get five, which is a nice touch. I hope they keep it that way in the future.
Thats it for the kit review, i hope you liked it and see you again in the next video, your Hamilkar Barkas.
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