Retrokits 1/72 Automitrailleuse White

The French Government began receiving, in 1915, supplies of trucks built by the White Motor Co. of Cleveland, Ohio and by the end of the same year the first twenty armoured cars were constructed in France on White chassis. The White was a fairly conventional chassis with a 35-h.p. four-cylinder water-cooled engine with drive to the rear wheels, although in the armoured car duplicate steering controls were fitted for driving backwards in emergency. The maximum speed of this 6-ton vehicle was 45km/h and the radius of action was about 250 km.

The normal crew carried was four men and the armament consisted of one 37-mm. gun and one Hotchkiss machinegun, or alternatively machineguns only. The two mountings were on opposite sides of the turret, which was of distinctive design and liberally equipped with observation ports.

By the end of the First World War the French Army had no less than 205 White armoured cars, more than three times the combined total of Renaults and Peugeots. This large supply led France, like Britain, to retain many wartime armoured cars in service after the war and some White armoured cars, modernized in details, like fitting them with modern pneumatic wheels, but still essentially the same in appearance, were in action in the first years of the Second World War.

The kit comes packed in a white cardboard box  typical of Retrokits, with the parts in zip-locked bags. The kit is done in pretty hard, light greyresin, and consists of some 30 parts, plus 4 fenders done in Photo-etched brass. (A smart solution to the problem of getting scale thickness fenders.) The moulding is first really class, with only some small amounts of moulding flash  to be cleaned off. Only the main part, the vehicle body, comes with a pretty big moulding stub.

The details are sharp and well done. Two especially well-done points are the rivets (almost scale appearance) and the really super tyres! The master builder has managed to reproduce the very complex and characteristic tyre pattern exactly. Amazing!

This kit is - as far as I can see - very realistic in both big and small details, and most accurate. I find nothing to fault here. Notice also that the turret is moulded hollow and the two top hatches can be moulded either closed or open.

The kit comes with a basic but still sufficient plan - see to the left here. There are no instructions for the painting of the model and no decals, but as this is pretty much standard procedure with resin kits I won't complain too much. 

This kit can be bought from Tracks & Troops in the Czech Republic or directly from Retrokits themselves.

Dominique Jadoul is the very talented Master Modeller behind Retrokits and their kits are just getting better and better. This is one of the best WW1 Armoured Car kits that can be found on the market today. It comes very highly recommend!