The Hanomag SS100 started life in civilian service in 1936 as the SP100 Heavy Tractor. Produced in two- and four-door options, this powerful truck saw service in the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht, and was often seen towing the V-2 rocket.
Takom’s SS100 is the first injection-molded kit of this vehicle in 1/35 scale plastic. No photo-etch is included. Along with gray and clear styrene, seven tires are molded in vinyl with good tread pattern and sidewall detail — but the company name is not one I have seen associated with German vehicles.
Typical of Takom, instructions are in a small booklet with color profiles produced by Ammo of Mig Jimenez. There are painting callouts throughout, with RLM colors much of the time. Decals provide gauges, placards, and license-plate numbers, but no unit or tactical markings.
This model comprises only 172 parts, and much of the detail is molded in place. Only a few knock-out marks needed filling, but there were some large mold lines that needed removal and sometimes repair, including filler.
I began construction by gluing any of the parts that came in halves and filling all of the knock-out marks; then I could move along quickly.
The engine has a lot of detail, but most of it is solid-molded — this won’t be a problem after the hood is closed. Be careful gluing the front bumper in place. The rectangle is the license plate. I thought it was to hold the hood in place and glued it on top. There is no winch detail, just the outer shell, so I painted the interior a dark color to hide the missing detail.
The front and rear leaf springs are molded in halves, leaving a nasty seam to fill. Step 13 says to add the gearshift levers before gluing the cab, but I left these off until the cab was in place to prevent breakage. The front wheels can be kept steerable with the old heated-screwdriver technique.
Assembly of the cab depends on how much you want to build and still get the entire interior painted. I had hoped to leave one of the front doors open to show off the interior, but this would have left a weak joint between the front of the cab (Part E2) and its floor. So, I glued all the doors shut. To get proper placement of Part E2, I skipped Step 20 and glued the door frames and doors onto the cab floor first. This allowed me to glue E2 into its proper position. The rest of the interior details and cab roof were left separate for painting.
The roof light has two options: One is molded in clear styrene (Part H9) and the other in gray styrene (E12), but that is not shown in the directions. The hood assembly made no sense to me, so I glued the sides, hood, and grille together at the same time, then glued this to the cab. The grille and hood side vents are molded shut, so you won’t see any of the engine or the radiator underneath. Oddly, the taillights are molded in clear styrene but the lights on the windscreen (Part A1) are molded in gray styrene. I drilled these out and filled them with Microscale Micro Kristal Klear. The windows look thick, but they’re glued from the inside so it’s not as noticeable.
Color profiles show four schemes: dark yellow, olive green, panzer gray, and a dark yellow and olive green camouflage. Areas of operation are indicated, but no units are given. I chose the olive green scheme and used Tamiya XF-58 with black green (XF-27) as a shadow coat. Adding dark yellow (XF-60) to the olive green provided highlights. Ammo’s satin varnish (090) sealed everything before filters and washes finished out the weathering. I used Humbrol enamel for all of the detail painting.
The decals were thick and seemed to repel the setting solution, but they eventually settled down and did not silver. Four sets of numbers 0 through 9 are provided, but with three license plates you cannot have a license number with a repeating number. Getting them all to line up can be a challenge.
Some may complain about the lack of detail in some areas. But when it is finished, Takom’s model looks like a Hanomag SS100. With no complex assemblies and a low parts count, this kit is easily built by any modeler. It took me only 28 hours to assemble mine, with much of that time spent painting the interior. It’s a great change-of-pace model.
For those who want more vehicle information, the site Panzerserra Bunker (
panzerserra.blogspot.com) is a good place to start. There are some great civilian schemes for these. Hopefully, someone will make decals to add variety to our shelves of green, gray, and yellow vehicles.
Note: A version of this review appeared in the July 2017 issue.