Backdated German drivers

 Along with the Allies, I also needed to retrofit some German drivers. I'd actually been a bit more assiduous with the Germans, but it was an excuse to buy a load more German seated figure packs and, gunners and even some spare head packs from Peter Pig.

Most of the 'empty' vehicles are from my recent DAK project, although I have a couple of very old early war Kubelwagons also missing drivers. I didn't do the DAK vehicles at the time as it was such a huge project and I wanted to streamline the production as much as possible

And here they are after, again, they look so much better. I have to say, some of these vehicles are a bit more challenging to retrofit than the jeeps. Jeeps have cutaway sides, which makes getting figures with sticking out elbows in much easier.

These are Germans from the PP seated Germans pack, which like the US one, comes with a mixture of drivers, armed figures and a couple of lounging officers. I also got some spare heads in a variety if headgear, but for these figures I didn't need to do any swaps. They are nice figures but on 'eaten all the pies' end of bulk, compared to PSC, QRF, Skytrex or even the early PP figures.

I did most of the uniforms in tropical/cotton drill mid-green, with some Field Grey mixed in and the helmets a  mixture of grey or dark tan, the idea being they won't look too out of place in any theatre.

First up were these three very old (late 1990s) PP Kubelwagens. I have to say it was an absolute pig to get them in. These vehicles date from when PP stuff was smaller than it is now, and internal space is minute, not helped by the figure poses themselves which stuck out sideways. It took a lot of surgery to get them in, and even then, they've ended up sitting more in the middle than I'd like. Anyway, they did get in eventually, and they still look better than the empty vehicles. I just wish I had a few of the plastic PSC drivers left, but I don't.

As I was working on them, I added impressionistic number plates, tail lights etc. which also raised them a bit.

This is much more recent, a BPM Kubelwagen and considerably more roomy inside as the hull sides are much thinner. It still took a fair bit of surgery to get the figure in though.

And finally these two PBM Sdkfz 10s. The sideways space was fine in these larger vehicles, but there wasn't much room front-back, so I ended up having to file off quite a lot of the drivers very expansive bums and lower torsos. A tricky job here was cutting out the 3D printed steering wheels, which were very close to the windscreens, but I managed to avoid snapping them off by accident.

With all the filing and cutting, the drivers went in these quite well in the end, and the moulded on steering wheels looked fine. Anyway, glad to have done that and in future I'll try and do it as I go along instead.