A Tiny Simca (1/35)

A steady stream of 1:35 kits of civilian cars have been arriving on the market lately. Made by the same companies that usually do kits of Tiger-tanks and other military hardware. The civilian cars are very useful on a model railway like mine. The car now on my worktable is the little Simca 5 from Tamiya.

The Simca 5 was designed in Italy by Fiat and produced at the Simca plant in Nanterre, France from 1936. It was a tiny car designed for the ordinary family (like the German Volkswagen) and able to travel 110 km on just 5 litres of fuel. The last Simca 5's left the assembly lines in 1949. In Nystrup the Simca is owned by the accountant of the gravel company.

The Tamiya kit is a great little kit and with only 57 parts the car is quite a fast project - see here for a review. Contrary to a company like ICM (I have built their kit of the Opel Kapitän) that designs kits with countless tiny parts and akward assemblies, Tamiya uses a different approach with few, well designed parts that assembles with ease. For a 1:35 railway modeller that needs a nice little civilian car and doesn't fancy fiddling with a kit with myriads of small parts, the Tamiya Simca is an obvious choice. Notice that Bronco has also made a kit of a the Fiat-version of the same design. With a lot more parts.



50 parts reduced to 8 waiting to be primed. The seven clear parts are still in their plastic bag. I did the assembly in about one hour.

Painting is progressing. A briefcase and a suitcase has joined the other parts. I have searched the internet to find a good colour for my model. I'm currently trying to decide between blue and green.

Because I'm modelling in 1:35 I can model Nystrup's local fire brigade's Mercedes fire engine (made by two companies: ICM or MiniArt), an Opel bus is announced from Roden and an American Packham should be on its way from ICM. What I would really wish for was a little post war British car like the Morris Minor.