The Dodge

German & Allied Wheeled Vehicles
Militar's Kits Hors Serie No. 5
MK Editions
ISBN 2-9509986-5-8
88 pages, softbound

Reviewed by John Prigent

The second of MK Editions’ books on German & Allied wheeled vehicles makes up for the first one’s concentration on German subjects by being entirely about Dodges. It covers modelling the WC51, WC53 Carryall, WC54, WC57, WC62 and WC64 in a very comprehensive set of articles by various authors, each accompanied by reference photographs. Most of the base kits are from Skybow, and are no longer easily available since the company was taken over by AFV Club – but the good news is that the kits have been announced for re-release later this year in the AFV Club range.

Coverage starts with five pages looking at the various Dodge kits that have been on the market, starting with the Max releases which have subsequently appeared under the Airfix and Italeri labels, covering the Skybow kits of course, and finishing with resin conversions and etched sets. The next nine pages give closeup detail shots of Dodge features and how to model them, as elements common to the modelling articles that follow. Those articles are uniformly excellent, with loads of reference photos too – even the Skybow “Patton’s Command Car” is capable of improvement and here is the information about what can be done. I wish I’d had these photos of the real car when I built mine! The final piece, on the WC64 KD, even includes templates to make the slab-sided knock-down body since no kit is available and the only conversion is wrongly dimensioned.

MK Editions has made a new departure here by giving us bilingual English/French text, instead of a book in French with an English insert. OK, the insert was a complete translation but its much easier to use this way. Some of the English is a bit fractured, but nothing to worry about if you stop and think a moment – English-speakers who remember a bit of their school French will have even fewer problems.

Very highly recommended!