The venerable Humvee has been part of America’s armed forces since the 1980s. Many model manufacturers have produced many different Humvee kits, and now joining the ranks is the ICM 1/35 scale Humvee M1097A2 plastic model kit of a stripped-down, utility variant.
Assembly begins with the single-piece frame, suspension, and drive train. The parts fit well and need only minimal cleanup for mold lines. As the most complex portion of the kit, I found the instructions unclear for locating certain parts, which is unfortunate because it’s the most complex part. Trial and error saw me through, and the rest of the kit was smooth sailing.
The basic body builds quickly — it doesn’t even have doors! I only deviated from the build sequence in the instructions to hold off adding the windshield and its frame until after painting. I didn’t want to mask the clear parts, and the engineering of the kit made adding it at the end easy.
Finally, I must say the vinyl tires are beautifully realized. ICM has molded them without ugly seams running through the middle of the tread, and there’s a single connection point that can be hidden where the tire meets the ground.
Unmentioned in the instructions,
ICM published an animated video to YouTube showing the model’s full assembly, step by step. Had I known this early on, it would have helped with assembling the chassis!
References for ICM colors are provided, but I prefer Tamiya paints for airbrushing. The instructions provide two nice, five-view color profiles of the standard NATO three-tone camouflage or desert tan schemes. I chose the desert scheme and used Tamiya Flat Black (No. XF-01) for the frame and suspension and Desert Yellow (No. XF-59) for the body. I detail-painted with Vallejo colors.
ICM’s decals are thin and use a new digital process that allows you to wash away the carrier film after placing the marking on the model. This eliminates the unsightly clear edges around decals, and I found it worked perfectly! I hope this is a sign of things to come for all decal manufacturers.
One warning: Cut the single decal for the five gauges on the instrument panel into individual gauges. The carrier film dissolved before I could line up all the instruments, and a couple were ruined when I tried to move them into place. I ended up painting them instead.
This was a small project, given the stripped-down nature of the vehicle and relatively low parts count. Despite the one issue of vague location points on the chassis, it’s a fun, straightforward kit to build. The parts fit well, with almost no cleanup required. I only spent about 10 hours building my ICM 1/35 scale Humvee M1097A2 plastic model kit and another five hours on painting and weathering. I think it would be a good kit for a beginner with a few kits under their belt.