HobbyBoss has released its kit of this important French tank with link-and-length tracks, and posable hatches for the driver, commander, and engine compartment that reveal interiors featuring the engine plus driver and commander stations. Markings are for a French tank and a German capture.

I built the engine up and painted it with Tamiya semigloss black. The instructions show two small parts but not their part numbers; looking on the C sprue, I found they were parts C1 and C68.

I painted the drivetrain Tamiya NATO brown (XF-68). No fan belts were included. Without references for the radiator or the squirrel-cage fan, I painted them semigloss black. The intake manifold and duct work was painted silver; the cover, light gray.

Before I assembled the interior, I painted the side walls Testors camouflage white; the floor is Tamiya NATO green (XF-67). After assembling the driver’s seat, I painted it Tamiya khaki (XF-49) with a semigloss black backing. There are no decals for the instrument panel; it’s up to you to paint or look to the aftermarket (or your spares) for decals.

The suspension was a challenge. The photoetched metal is very stiff (it appears to be two layers). I bent parts PE-4 over an artist’s pencil, then folded up the sides; there was no form to check them for accuracy. I super glued them to parts D18 and D27. After curing, they were super glued to the other halves. Because of the poor gluing surfaces, these suspension parts are fragile. I painted the tracks with Floquil mud and dragged a silver pencil over the track cleats.

Installing pioneer tools on the hull was a bit tricky; locators did not want to go through the holes, and the shovel was a bit oversized.

The turret presented no problems. The main armament, the 37mm cannon, does not have a breech. Considering the commander’s hatch can be open and the breech can be seen, I’m surprised it was not included. Three hooks on the commander’s hatch (parts E9, found in a corrected parts map on an enclosed errata sheet) were too tiny to pick up with any of my tweezers, and one went to a galaxy far, far away. I suggest leaving them on the sprue and cutting them apart from one another; use the piece of sprue to hold each part in place to glue.

I built the R35 in French markings, painting the camouflage with Tamiya German field gray (XF- 65) and red brown (XF-64) and applying Tamiya weathering powders.

I took 38 hours to build this kit, spending half of that time on the suspension. As complicated as that was, I can only recommend the kit to experienced modelers.

Note: A version of this review appeared in the December 2014 FineScale Modeler.