Beaverette Mk.3 armoured car (scratchbuilt)

This is the other scratchbuilding project I’m working on, and it’s VERY different to a 1/24 Bradley in terms of
size and complexity! It’s a 1/35 Beaverette Mk. III British armoured car. These vehicles were built in the early
40s (1940/41 I think) for home defence, mainly airfield defence (it is named after Lord Beaverbrook, the WW2
minister for aircraft production), and were based on a Standard 14 car chassis (with the same engine, so they weren’t very fast, carrying 2 and a half tons of armour). It really is -tiny-, only about the size of a Mini car (I should have put a figure next to it to give an idea of size), and is probably the third-smallest British AFV after the Daimler Dingo and
Vickers-Carden-Lloyd tankette. There are a number in museums, one is at Duxford which I will be visiting on Sunday, I’ll
try to remember to take some pictures of it.

The model was based on the Airfix book “Modelling Armoured Cars” which has a lot of scratchbuilding plans (in 1/76 scale,
I scaled it up with a calculator). It’s entirely scratchbuilt from Plasticard except for the wheels and the Vickers MG (left over from a WW1 aircraft kit). As far as I know, there are no commercial kits available for this vehicle.
I also chose it as a scratchbuilding subject as it’s a relatively easy shape (apart from the turret) and because I just
like it - it’s such a clunky, improbable, makeshift design, about as far removed from the usual Tigers and Shermans as you can get :slight_smile: I plan to do more scratchbuild projects like this in the future, providing I can get some more 1/35 wheels!

Here’s the model, complete apart from weathering:



That is way too cool, Drawde!

I’ve never seen one of these…very unique…and well done.

Regards, Dan

That’s pretty wild, Like an mobile armoured doghouse.
Great build though, thanks for the pics.

Very nicely done Drawde !!!

Nice to see something a little different.

Thanks for sharing !!!

Great work Drawde! You certainly have some interesting projects. I love armoured cars, so it is great to see such a unique build!

It looks like an ingenious British deathtrap, but you are doing a fantastic job on it.

Do you have a source fon information for some of these scratch building projects?

G[:D]

P.S. The headlight is beautiful work by itself.
[tup]

[:D] that is a cool peice of armour what size shell did it use?

gdarwin[roy]

Very cool. Even it does look like something I would not have wanted to been assigned to.

very impressive. thanks for sharing your work.

joe

Great work Drawde and an interesting subject to boot.

What a unique subject Drawde, nice to see something different.

Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing.

Gotta love anything that is scratchbuilt. Interesting topic, and unusual. Thanks for sharing.

Wow, great job on the scratchbuilding.

great job!!!

LOL & ditto 2 the above… just don’t get the doggy mad !
very nice 2 see such an unusual subject,
keep those scratchbuilding projects coming &
thanx 4 sharing this one w/ us !

frosty[:)]

That’s precisely what I was going to say!

Good work on the scratchbuild.

Very impressive scratchbuild. Definitely something different [:)]

gdarwin,
no one else answered, so i will take a stab,
that looks like a shroud for a machinegun barrel,
so maybe it is .303 ?

this page has a picture claiming to be the Beaverette, but there is no turret!
http://uk.geocities.com/invasion1940/army_gallery.html

this shows it as a Bren or Vickers “K”
http://www.djparkins.clara.net/fline/fl76v_beaverette.htm

Here’s a couple of photos of the real thing, at the Duxford air museum:

There are a couple of minor inaccuracies and omissions in my model which I discovered
from looking at the real vehicle, for example my model does not have the welding seams
on the hull side, the window shield supports are the wrong shape (the real vehicle has
a ratchet system, my model just has plain rods), and the two small circular objects either
side of the radiator are actually small lights, not rivet heads as I had thought from my reference drawings.
They are a flattened spherical shape and have an electric cable attached. The main headlight
also has a cable, as you can see from the pics.
Still, I think my model is fairly good, many commercial models have at least as many “problems” :slight_smile:
Another interesting small detail is that the vehicle actually has the “Standard” manufacturer’s badge
above the radiator grille! I might try to paint this on.
Regarding armament, the one in the museum has a Bren gun, whilst my model has a Vickers gun (originally
from a WW1 aircraft kit). Both of these MG types were used, probably depending on what was available at
the time. Some Beaverettes carried a Boyes anti-tank rifle instead.

BTW if this version (Mk.III) looks flimsy, the earlier ones were even worse - the Mk.II was open-topped and
the Mk.I even had an open back, protected only by wooden planks(!). But the Mk.III was the most common type.

Not sure how many of these vehicles are still in existence… there is one at the Cobbaton military vehicle
museum in Devon (which was my inspiration for building this model) and there is probably one at Bovingdon,
but I don’t know of any others.

Drawde,
thanks for the follow up and for the 1:1 pics!
lots of good info there.