# Humber Super Snipe touring car



## Owen E Oulton (Jan 6, 2012)

*Humber Super Snipe Touring Car*










Well, it's a car, but it's a military staff car... I'm talking about the 45-year old Airfix Monty's Humber in 1/32. Even at almost a half-century old (mine is an original pressing, though it's been pretty much continuously re-popped every few years), it's still a gem of a kit. It's no longer state of the art, but is still better than most kits released today. Built straight from the box, it depicts Montgomery's second Humber, the so-called "Victory Car" (M239485) he used in Europe, but I wanted his iconic "Old Faithful" (M239459) from North Africa and Italy. The Victory car was a 1943 while Old Faithful was a 1941, but there were only minor differences between them. I opted to depict the top down, and while conventional "wisdom" is that the folded top in the Airfix kit is inaccurate, it matches wartime photos as well as the restored original in the Imperial War Museum. The modifications I made were restricted to removing the moulded-in licence plates from the bumpers, adding the flag standard to the grille surround, a small device (purpose unknown) to the cowl, swapping the positions of the fog-light and siren, leaving off the field marshall's ID plaques, moving the tail light to below the trunk latch, adding the rear-bumper mounted gas cans and placing a blackout light in the driver's side headlight shell with a simple shroud on the other headlight. The windshield was moulded as a single piece for frame and glass, but there was a bad flow-line in the clear styrene, so I set about removing the "glass" with a pin-vise, #11 blade and a small Dremel grinding bit. This was painstaking and tedious since the clear styrene was hard and brittle, but I persevered and soon I has an empty frame with only one crack in the corner (repaired with a drop of MEK). It now sits in sub-assemblies (upper body, fenders/interior/chassis, wheels and gas-can mounts) awaiting base-coating with Krylon camouflage khaki (which is a good match for dusty desert paint). Seats will be done with burnt sienna as will the map pockets in the doors, while the dash will be dark brown ant the steering column/wheel will be gloss black. I've opted to leave the body in a single-colour scheme without the olive green camouflage it sometimes wore. The folded top will be done in lightened Tamiya khaki. The windshield glass will be replaced with 10 thou clear sheet. The two figures are very nice, so I'll use them as-is since Monty often wore the bomber jacket in North Africa and the driver is good-to-go with a khaki-drill uniform color. The blackout headlight was sourced from a Tamiya universal carrier and the gas cans from Academy's M3A1 Stuart.

Still don't have a working camera, no no pics for now.


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