ICM 1/35 Typ 770K Tourenwagen
By Rob Folden
Stock# 35533
MSRP: $34.99
To anyone who knows me, its no small secret that I love to build WWII German armor. But I REALLY love WWII German staff cars. And thanks to ICM, I get to add another one to the collection. The newest release from ICM is the Typ 770k [W150] Tourenwagen. The Tourenwagen was designed and built by Daimler-Benz in 1938, and for obvious reasons, became the premier pre-war luxury car. It was for this reason, that the German military adopted it for use with ony the top military and state officials. Out of the 88 vehicles built, only 46 sported the tourenwagen open-body style. With its 155hp inline 8-cylinder engine and room for 6, the Tourenwagen featured prominently in parades and other events.
ICM has faithfully recreated every detail of the beautiful Typ770K. From a very detailed chassis including a full engine, to the spacious interior, to the clean stylings of the exterior, ICM missed no detail. In fact, ICM has even including paint guides and decal options for civilian models.
At first look, I was amazed and the shear number of parts. And quality parts at that! The fine detail on some parts was astonishing. But ICM did an excellent job. Some of the key ares of note are the multi-piece tires that have a high level of tread detail, the highly detailed engine, and the finely crafted steering wheel [multi-piece]. Two things I was a bit disappointed by were the single piece sides of the main cabin and the single piece hood sides. With such a nice interior and engine, I would have liked to have seen options to assemble them in the open position. However, a little care with a No. 11 blade, and that can easily be fixed. Another let down was the decals, which do not feature the swastika in the center of the flags. This is to be expected though, since the kit is manufactured in the Ukraine.
Overall, I could not be more pleased with ICM's Tourenwagen, and I hope they continue along this line with some of the other staff cars. I highly recommend this kit to not only military modelers, but also to automotive modelers. My only word of advise to those tank builders out there who want to try this kit out... practice your chrome techniques first. Cause this car has a lot of chrome. My thanks to Scale Model Kits for providing a beautiful review sample.
