Renault R35 (Early version)
Kit #: PS720180 Review by Doug Chaltry
And here is yet another of my recent shelf-queen projects. It sat, mostly assembled, tucked away in a plastic box for over five years. It was given to me by my friend Stephen Brezinski, one of a pair of kits that came in his box. At the time I think I wanted to put a little extra effort into it, but I ended up packing it away when I remodeled my modeling room, and then forgot all about it. Last month I pulled it out, and decided to simply paint it up in order to demonstrate to the modeler what this kit will look like built right out of the box. And as I'm sure you've come to expect from me by now, this is where I tell you that I wasn't entirely successful at doing that. Yup. It was the towing shekels... S-Model provides them in etched brass, and I just couldn't... They looked terrible being so flat. So yeah, I bent new ones from copper wire, and made little securing pins from a finer brass or lead wire, not sure. But other than THAT, this kit is built OOB.

There's no reason for me to post photos of the kit parts prior to construction, since we already have a great Preview of this kit from Stephen, which shows most of the kit pre-construction. Which is good, because I failed to make scans of the kit parts regardless.

My own observation on the kit construction is that it was incredibly simple. As with most S-Model kits, the weakest part (for us static display modelers) is the running gear. Very over-simplified in order to mold them in single parts. But given that, the outside detail of the wheel units is very nice. The tracks are not detailed on their outer surfaces, and took quite a long time to remove the molding seam from between each link. Judicious use of pigments hides most of the lack of detail on these parts.

I painted the model with ATOM paints from AMMO by MIG. I first painted the sides of the turret white, masked off the triangles on each side, and then painted the camouflage. The decals are from MiniPrint (Editions du Barbotin). If I was going to build another one of these, I would add a few more details, and try to replace the running gear with a 3D-printed set from Syndikate Co. It's made for the First-to-Fight R35, but perhaps it can be made to fit this kit as well?

Even though I am not doing a complete evaluation of kit accuracy, I took the opportunity to measure the completed model against published dimensions. Turns out that scale plans and dimensions are hard to find for this tank. I found some dimensions listed in an old AFV Weapons Profile (#59), and Wikipedia has measurements that are very close to that old source. Additionally, there are scale plans in Wydnawnictwo Militaria's 355 Plan Pack Vol. I, which when measured, produce the same numbers as those given on Wikipedia. Accordingly, the kit measurements match these numbers almost perfectly, and thus I am confident that this kit scales out very well to 1/72nd.

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Article Last Updated: 7 December 2025