My younger readers may have never seen the British sitcom ‘Allo ‘Allo!, but for many of those that are now in their thirties or forties, the story of René Artois, the owner of a small café in occupied France, is a true classic. Even though this TV series featured many colourful characters, a few of them really stuck in memories of every spectator. Definitely, this was the case of Lt. Gruber and his ‘little tank’. Of course, we all recall the latter as a real Sd.Kfz.222, as at the time when the series was aired, there were no internet nor rivet-counters. In fact, ‘Hubert’, as the vehicle was called by Gruber, was a rather moderately successful replica, built on the chassis of a British light artillery tractor or armoured car. In particular, the Humber AC is often mentioned as the chassis donor.

Following this, I initially thought that I could replicate the dummy Sd.Kfz.222 in 1/35 scale, using Bronco’s Humber kit. However, whilst watching a number of episodes…I mean, upon closer inspection of the reference material, I discovered that neither the Humber or any other vehicle available as 1/35 scale plastic kit may be used without some serious modifications. Through the good offices of IBG, I received a couple of spare sprues, including the chassis elements of their 1/35 Chevrolet C15 kit. This was supplemented with a set of resin Humber AC wheels from PanzerArt. The rest had to be built from scratch. Including kitbashed figure, with sculpted Gruber’s face.