RPM's 1/35 Ford-TFC
by Eugene Sautin

The Ford Tfc was Poland’s first armored car that was designed by Tadeusz Tański. The car was based on the ford- chassis so it performed well, it had good armor that could defend the crew from small arms fire and shrapnel (the armor came from ex. German trench shields) About 16 or 17 cars were made. The cars were rushed to combat because of the Soviet invasion. The cars did well and were used in the subsequent counter attacks against the Soviets. 12 cars survived the war. Their withdrawal started in 1927, and the last was withdrawn in 1931. Tadeusz Tański had plans to make a larger more armed armoured car but the indea was rejected in 1930 since there was no need, a critical blunder by the Poles to modernize their army.  Sadly the man who invented this successful armored car was killed in 1941 by the Brutal Nazi regime in Auschwitz. For a lot more information on the car and more info on its combat go to: http://derela.republika.pl/ftb.htm
 

Click on the pictures for enlarged versions!

The kit comes in three sprues; two of the sprues are identical and are used to make the Ford chassis, the other bigger sprue is for the body of the armored car. The plastic is quite soft and is easy to work with; the kit gives you lots of extra parts that can be used for other projects or spares if you mess up. The kit’s decals are simple giving you the options to make several cars, “Osa,” “Komar,” “Bak,” “Mucha.” These are all names of insects in Polish, and since the car was tiny it self the names go well. The translations if you are wondering are: Wasp, Mosquito, some kind of beetle, and fly.  The instructions are well done, and are on the back of the box, as is the case for many small kits, so if you are one of those people that throws away the box before you build the kit you will have much more unnecessary work.

Building the kit is pretty straight forwards, if you kept the box that is. But have some caution making the chassis it is easy to mix up on which side to put parts, i.e. is it the top or the bottom. As a rule most of the parts will be bellow not on top.  The body of the car is easy to make but putting together the front is tedious since the fit is very poor, and filling will be needed. The angular slab that goes in front is extremely hard to put on, since the parts don’t match, again filling does the trick. Thankfully, the 1/35 scale kit has rivets unlike the 1/72 so a major hassle is avoided; the door braces are also hard to put on since they don’t bend into shape and it is best to replace them. The lights don’t have lenses like the other cars RPM makes so they have to be made; I just poured white glue to get the shape and then painted them.  The kit comes with some extra stowage, like an axe; even though all photos show they had pick-axes not axes. Also there are extra details like hatches and a starter in the front and even a horn!

There are no painting guides and there are some arguments on what colors were used, so my model is just an interpretation by no means a guide, anyone trying to paint or just make this model need to go to http://derela.republika.pl/ftb.htm . Since the amount of photo information is scarce it’s almost impossible to make a direct model of a specific vehicle and this kit is made to make a more generic version. To paint the Tfc I used Ochre, Grey, Earth, Olive drab and black lines. There is some evidence that brown and purplish grey could have been used. The decals have big strips of film that don’t go too good on the riveted surface so its best to use clear gloss on the decals after they are put. To do some light weathering I put some muddish color on the car.

You really can’t fault anything in this kit since all the problems can be solved other than the fact that you cant make a specific model but just a generic one. So based on what the kit has its five stars. If you want to make a model of a specific Tfc you would have to do a lot of research, but this kit would still be a great place to start.