Poor Jeel model in a magazine

[Lee Bishop]

I got the newest Fine scale Modeler and it has an article on detailing a WW2 Jeep.

It’s shame the guy knew nothing about Jeeps, as he’s lacking a bunch of stuff, like the latches for the hood and windshield, has the blackout light painted red(!), postwar tire pressure markings and no hood markings at all.
Those range stakes would never stay there and you can’t strap stuff to the front fenders like that unless you punch very big holes on the inside upper edges.
“Any similarities between this and a real WW2 Jeep are purely coincidental”...

[armyairforce]

Unfortunately there are many modellers who never look at reference photos, particularly when weathering.

It's not always the modeller's fault however. There was a guy who made a nice flamethrower Jeep recently with lots of scratch building and he'd done a pretty good job of it. However, the kit manufacturer ( Meng I think ) had used a present day Hotchkiss Jeep, which had been converted to a flamethrower Jeep, as their reference material. So their Wartime Flamethrower Jeep kit was a WW2/Hotchkiss hybrid.

Airfix issued some airfield vehicles that were fantasy hybrids too. Their Battle of Britain airfield refuelling set had a tanker copied from a post war version. Their Queen Mary trailer set had a hybrid of the 3 ton and 5 ton trailers combined and the crane wasn't accurate either!

Of course you get some people who are happy to slap a kit together without any real concern over accuracy, just looking for an escape from real life stresses and at the other end of the scale, those who buy kits and throw most of it away to replace it all with more accurate resin parts. That amuses me as at most modelling scales, none of the resin parts can be 100% accurate anyway! It is the overall impression and fun factor that matters at the end of the day and getting a personal balance between the two.