France was looking to replace the Renault FT used in World War I, and three companies developed prototypes: Renault, Hotchkiss, and FCM. The tank from FCM was considered the best of the three, but also the most expensive, so only 100 were produced. ICM’s kit of the FCM 36 consists of 242 light gray plastic parts with minor flash and vinyl tracks that are detailed on both sides. Fine welds are present on the hull and turret, and the driver’s and turret hatches are molded separately. The only interior detail is a full gun breech and coaxial machine gun. The instructions are some of the clearest I have seen with only a few parts being added in each step. ICM includes two marking options detailed in four-view color profiles.
Construction starts with the multipart lower hull. If you choose to paint the suspension units separately from the hull, leave off the inner suspension covers (parts B3 and B19). The drive sprocket is shown with two different outer halves (parts C18 and C26). There are two of each, but I could not find any differences between the two parts. There are no locator pins for the road wheels. To ensure they were assembled correctly, I inserted a metal rod into the center after they were glued together. Parts C10 are thicker on one end, and the directions show which way the thicker end should be glued to the hull. I decided not to glue the mud-shoot covers (parts A1 and A15) because I worried about breaking them. This decision proved to be a problem when I did try to glue them in place later. If you do not cement the outer suspension covers (parts A5 and A12) in the correct position, they will interfere with the mud-shoot covers. The box cover shows a bolt on the end of the idler wheel tensioner (Part C23). I punched hex nuts out of styrene to replicate this detail.
Because the upper run of the tracks passed through the inside the upper hull, you have to decide whether to follow the directions and mount the tracks before you glue the upper and lower hulls together, or do as I did and mount the tracks after the tank was painted. Regardless of your decision, the tracks are supplied in two runs per side. Mine came twisted in their packing, and I did my best to straighten them. The connection tabs are about 2mm square — not a lot of contact area for glue. I couldn’t get plastic cements to work, but Gorilla glue held. Still, I didn’t trust the join and ended up going old school and stitching the track length together.
The only change I made while assembling the upper hull was to leave the muffler in three pieces to help ease painting. When the two halves of the muffler are glued together, they leave the tail pipe with an opening. Part B12 is the bracket that holds the jack shown shown in the box art but not included in the kit.
The only fit issue I had was with mounting the gun in the turret. The mounting brackets for the gun (parts A13 and A14) have small alignment pins that do not hold. I found it easier to mount the brackets to the inside of the upper half of the turret and then snap the gun in place. The machine-gun muzzle sticks out from the turret and is easy to damage. I ended up bending mine several times. It might be better to mount the machine gun after the model is painted. You have a choice of mounting the turret hatch in the open or closed position. There are separate mounting brackets used for either hatch position, but the numbers for these parts are reversed in the directions. Part C33 is for the closed position and C15 is for the open position.
The last thing to be assembled is the styrene tow chain. Half the links are molded open, and you clip them together alternating between open and closed links to create runs of 20. Tamiya Quick Setting Plastic Cement worked well for gluing the links. One of the links in my sample was misshapen, so one run is short a link. Also, I was not able to get two links to fit between the brackets (parts C10) like the directions show. So I glued the free end to the bolt handle.
The two marking choices are for a tank from the 7th BCC in Chemery, France, May 1940, and a tank from the 4th BCC in France, June 1940. The heart markings show that the tanks are from the 3rd Company, 2nd Platoon. The color profiles show the right and left sides of the tank, as well as the front and back. No top view is shown and would have been helpful showing how the camouflage colors come together. The colors do not always seem to match up from the side view to the front and rear views.
The directions call for either Revel or Tamiya paint; I chose Tamiya colors. The sky color (No. XF-21) recommended for the light green seemed too blue and light, but once the model was weathered, it darkened up considerably. Panzer Putty was used to get the hard edge for the camouflage that is present on French tanks. Vallejo and Life Color paints were used for the rest of the detail painting. The tracks were painted with a 50/50 mix of Tamiya flat black and red brown. They were then weathered with LifeColor Liquid Pigment paints. Once the model was painted and weathered, I fed the tracks through the hull and connected them. The decals were easy to move into place and laid down well over surface detail with Tamiya Mark Fit decal solvent.
Even with only 246 parts, the FCM took me 26 hours to complete, much of that time due to masking and painting. With the good fit and low parts count of this kit would normally be a good candidate for any level of modeler. However, the difficulty of gluing the tracks and the hard-edge camouflage pattern might make this better suited for a modeler with a few builds under their belt. If you like to focus on painting, this is a model for you.