When one thinks of VW Beetles, one doesn't necessarily think of the German Army. I know that I owned one that was green and took me through the era of Flower Power with much grace and savings of gasoline. I knew that this car was designed in the late 1930's but had not realized that many were built until after the end of the war. The running gear was used in the famed Kubelwagen that was prevalent on all fronts.

A total of nearly 700 of these Type 82 (basically a two door sedan) VW's was built during the war. As their later brethren, they were very bare bones transportation. These versions even having a bare metal floor! Despite such Spartan interiors, I doubt if it was much different from my VW of the '60s. While the instructions give precious little information it, I imagine that the engine was around 1200cc or less. It is unknown if any war production split window VWs still exist, though I would hope that one would be preserved somewhere.

This is the first kit from CMK that I have bought. I was mightily impressed with the size of the box, but when opening it, was equally surprised by the extra room there was in there. Apparently, it is a standardized box size as the VW kit rattles around in there quite a bit! There are over 50 injected parts and 13 clear bits. Some of them will not be used depending on if you do a military or civilian version. The parts look very nicely molded and there is very little flash at all. The ejector pin marks are mostly hidden though there are a few that will need some work, such on the backs of the front seats and a huge one on the roof of the body.

The instruction sheet is very nice. It is six pages with the first page giving a short history in four languages. Page 2 is a parts breakdown as well as version guide. This page lists that there is a full interior and engine kit available. Undoubtedly at twice the price of the kit! The next three pages give 7 discrete steps in building the kit, noting what different parts go with which version. The last page is a painting guide for the two versions.

The decals are for two different vehicles. One is a camouflaged version for the Army as depicted on the box top. The other is for the Japanese Embassy. This one has hub caps and standard headlights. It is painted the standard VW Beetle color of many years……Black!

There are other VW kits that have been done, including one by Airfix in 1/32 scale. It would be interesting to compare the kits and see how much the state of the art has come along.

Overall, it looks like a nice little kit and something a bit different. This is a kit that both the car and armor builder can do!