1/35 Leichttraktor
ICM 1/35 Leichttraktor

And here we go! ICM's 1/35 Leichttraktor.

The Leichttraktor was a German prototype tank from 1930. Created in secrecy due to the conditions of the treaty of versailles, it was Germany's first post WW1 effort to design their own tank. Both Krupp and Rheinmetall submitted prototypes, which carried the same armament of a 3.7cm KwK 36, but differed in suspension design. Armour of the vehicle was around 12-16mm, and the vehicle could achieve speeds of up to 30 km/h. Whilst trials were succesful, the vehicle never entered production. However features of its design went on to be included in future German tank designs. The vehicle is well known from the MMO "World of Tanks", where it is commonly nicknamed the "loltraktor".

This is ICM's 1/35 kit of Rheinemtall's version of the Leichttraktor, and is the first kit of the vehicle released in this scale. I was happy to see a kit of the vehicle being produced, and pre-ordered it.

The building of the kit was fairly straight forward. The hull of the vehicle had very good fit, and I was especially impressed with how the radiator grills are built up.

The turret sadly was another story, with poor fit and some incorrectly molded components, which resulted in the elevation of the gun not really working. Once constructed it fit very tightly on the vehicle, meaning it doesn't really turn. I could try forcing it, but I worry about destroying the paint, so I will probably just leave it in the forward position.

The tracks of the vehicle were two piece rubber tracks. And whilst I know many modellers are not keen on rubber tracks, the real vehicle actually had rubber tracks, so in this way they are actually accurate. They fit on the vehicle fairly well, and a little super glue on the return rollers, helped simulate the very slight track sag this vehicle had.

I decided not to follow the camo scheme from the instructions as I lacked the correct colours, and was not confident in my ability to follow it anyway. I decided to base the camo of the vehicle off the pre-war dark grey and red-brown camo seen on some early German tanks such as the Pz. II. I used Vallejo Model Air Panzer Dark Grey, and German Red Brown paints for this, and I feel it came out very well! Detail was done using several colours including gunmetal, metallic black, and rust, which I feel resulted in a rather pleasing appearance.

The vehicle was given a gloss coat of pledge floor polish, which is my go-to product for gloss coats. I considered adding Girls und Panzer decals to the model, but discovered they were slightly too large, and I think they would have looked odd with this camo anyway, so I decided to simply use the historical decals it came with, although I added a "1" decal to the rear, simply to make it more interesting.

As a final step, the vehicle was given a coat of Vallejo Matt Varnish, which took away the unrealistic glossy shine and gave it a much better matt look.

In conclusion, despite its problems I am fairly happy with this kit, and as it's the only kit available of the Leichttraktor in this scale, I can definitely recommend it.

Happy Building!