Pimp my ride, desert style.

Started work on some Marmon Herrington armoured cars from GHQ, for our Italian-British games set in the eastern desert in 1940, before Rommel and his DAK turns up. "South African Reconnaissance Vehicle Mk II Armored Car, Marmon-Herrington Mk II" is the official name.

The Marmon Herrington is a strange beast indeed. I had thought it was something like the Rolls Royce armoured cars that were more or less converted civilian models, but this was something more extraordinarily. Ford chassis were ordered from Canada that were then modified by Marmon Herrington in the US, before being shipped to South Africa where they fitted purpose-built armour plates and english weaponry to the cars.

This vehicle in dug-in position has aquired an extra Vickers for AA defense.

The first mark had a Vickers water-cooled HMG and a LMG (presumably a Bren), but the Mark II recieved a Boys AT-rifle instead of the Vickers, so it could put up a fight against other armoured cars. It was also stretched a little bit compared to mark I. Some thousand units were built of the first two marks. Mark III had a completely different shape to the armour and over two thousand where built, but for 1940 we want to use the Mark II.

Late versions of the Mark II had welded armour instead of riveted. Note the extra Vickers again!

The cars where heavily modified in the field, even to the extent of removing the turret and dropping in whatever gun you had lying about, welding a couple of steel plates to it as a gun shield!

A late Mark II with an italian Breda 20mm gun instead of the turret, outside Tobruk in 1941.

On to the models!

Drive the italians into the mediterranean!

I started with a basecoat of Vallejo Dark Sand. I then picked out the tires with dark grey (just anyone will do) and the caunter camo scheme with Vallejo Khaki and Vallejo German Fieldgrey lightened a little bit with Dark Sand.

One of the cars has a 47mm gun which the crew "found".

The entire models were then drybrushed with Vallejo Light sand, and finally given a light wash with GW Gryphonne Sepia.

Notice the tiny rivets!

I don't really know if the colours for the Caunter scheme are correct. It's hard to judge from B&W photographs, and I have seen pictures of models and illustrations in books that vary from light blue and dark grey stripes to dark green and light grey! But I think the models look good in it!

The crew of the center vehicle was quickly blockpainted with Vallejo Khaki and Flesh.

The models were mounted on square 20mm bases from Renedra. I nearly botched the basing, using Vallejo Basing gel and Mig Powder. At first the gel almost didn't take any colour from the pigments, so I added a little vallejo paint. Then it got too dark. So I dolloped the gel onto the bases and sprinkled pigments on them while they were still wet, hoping that the pigments would seep in and settle on top, but the powder just clumped together. Luckily, after drying the clumps could be brushed out with a soft brush, and then fixed with a pigment fixer.

Next up for painting are the Rolls Royce armoured cars, and I was clever enough to fix bases for them too while I was doing the bases for the Marmon Herringtons.