Miniart 1/35 Mercedes Typ170 V Lieferwagen

I finished the Lieferwagen today without screwing it up! YAY!

A very enjoyable build and my first civilian vehicle rather that military. The kit goes together very well, the only thing I altered was the door hinges as the kit ones are too small and you won’t be able to depict the front doors fully open. Instead I made bigger hinges from styrene strip.

The way the kit is designed, it was possible to assemble and paint the body separately from the lower chassis. The blue paint was my own mix of Tamiya XF-18 and XF-23 as although the instructions call for XF-23 on its own, I felt it was far too light when compared to the box art and painting guide. The lower chassis was sprayed with XF-5 straight out of the jar.

The decals are very good and very thin but for whatever reason, when applying them to the painted surfaces they just would NOT move around like other decals do even with copious amounts of Micro Set, water etc. In the end after soaking in water, I had to keep the decal on the backing paper, slide a small area into position then when the decal was accurately placed, slide the rest of it off the backing paper so be warned.

Weathering was kept to a minimum with some highly thinned Tamiya Khaki sprayed on the lower body and windscreen then a dark brown pin-wash applied to lift the details a bit. The crates were sprayed with various Tamiya colours, gloss varnished for the decals and washes then dry brushed with Vallejo Iraqi sand. I didn’t bother with the bottle labels as once placed in the crates you can’t see them. The bottles had the caps painted as per the instructions.

I really do like these Miniart Typ 170 V’s for some reason and at the time of writing, they are doing another version that in between the camouflaged Typ 170’s included in the kit, there is an option of shiny red Deutsche Post Lieferwagen. Hmmm……

Anyway here’s the pics of the finished model;

I need to remove that fingerprint on the side of the fender….duh…

This makes a nice comparison with the Miniart Typ 170V Personenwagen I built a couple of years ago;

Miniart are certainly doing some great (and different) models at the moment and I like them very much.