Attack Hobby 1/72 Tatra T-57K Kübelwagen

By Chris Banyai-Riepl

History

I've done a lot of searching on this little vehicle since it came across my desk, and very little has turned up. Tatra is a Czech auto company dating back to the early days of automobiles. During the 1930s they had several cars and trucks in their catalog and one of them, the T-57, was quite a performer. So much so, in fact, that when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, the Tatra company was ordered to not make that car, as it was too competitive with Porsche and Volkswagen.

Later on, though, the Germans saw the benefits of the vehicle and ordered it up as a Kübelwagen, with four doors, soft windows, and a canvas top. This was put into production in 1940 and served in both the German Army and later the Czech Army.

And that's about all I could turn up on this vehicle.

The Kit

So what do you get in this small box? Well, a bunch of gray plastic parts, plus a small decal sheet and a small piece of acetate for the windscreen. The parts are fairly well molded, with no flash present. The sprues are large, though, and the actual parts are thin, so you'll need to remove them very carefully to avoid breaking some of the smaller ones.

The instructions are basic, showing only four steps to complete the kit. This doesn't mean that there's not a lot of detail, though. For such a small kit I was surprised by the number of parts, especially for things that could have been molded together, such as the seats and engine housing. The interior is made up of two seats, a gearshift, a front firewall, a steering column and steering wheel, and a rear bench seat.

All of that fits onto the one-piece chassis and around it goes the pieces for the sides, rear, and upper rear top. All of these pieces are thin and flat, with nothing to help in aligning everything together. This part of the construction is probably going to be the most difficult, but I think if you start with the sides, the rest should fall into place fairly easily. In doing some dry fitting, this is one area that will need some trimming and test fitting before final assembly, though, so proceed carefully.

Exterior details include a shovel alongside the driver's side, a couple of gas cans on the back, and two spare tires. A choice of open or closed canvas tops is provided as well. The small decal sheet has choices for two vehicles. The first one is the boxtop one, finished in panzer gray. The instructions place it in Bohemia in 1945. Badges of a dancing bear adorn the fender and the door (this last one isn't depicted in the boxtop artwork, though). The second choice is one from France in 1944, finished in a camouflage of dark yellow, red brown and dark green. License plates are provided for both choices as well. The decals feel thin, but they seem a bit muddy, especially around the black edges. Hopefully they will go on without much of a problem, though.

Conclusion

Without much to go on in regards to research materials, its difficult to gauge the accuracy of this kit, but it looks to be pretty close to 1/72 and should provide an interesting background to Luftwaffe dioramas and Wehrmacht dioramas alike. And for the really adventurous, a bit of work could probably turn this kit into the sports car version of the T-57 that this was based off of, opening up even more possibilities. This kit promises to be a pleasant diversion from the mainstream, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for something a bit different.