SCALE MODEL NEWS

French publisher-cum-model producer Editions Atlas has some very interesting miniatures available at the moment. SMN report: A long-time staple of the Armee de l'Air (French Air Force) training fleet, the Alpha Jet from Editions Atlas is to 1:72 scale. The metal and plastic miniature is accurately produced, though it lacks the ultimate precise detail that you might expect with an equivalent injection-moulded kit. But it's a sturdy production, so should last for years on the display shelf, and certainly looks the part in neatly applied red, white and blue stripes. The gold tail lettering marks the 60th anniversary of the national air display team, the Patrouille de France (French Patrol). Facel was a French car manufacturer that lasted only a decade, from 1954-64, but in those years the company produced a handsome series of cars. The Facel Vega FV2 (below) was the car to be seen in if you were a 1950s French movie star, and this 1:43 scale open-top version is what we get from E...

SMN report You have to hand it to Italy - the food tastes great, the sights are wonderful, the women gorgeous, and now we have Italeri showing us the Latin way with words to describe its new re-release Vintage Collection: “The glorious Italeri models are back in our catalogue!” Fiat's flying stork Well, the first ‘glorious’ model, due in May, is a 1930s Italian bomber, the twin-engined Fiat BR 20. This aircraft first flew in 1936, and for its time had advanced, mostly-metal construction. It became a widely-used medium bomber, though rather overshadowed by the much more numerous triple-engine SM 79 Sparviero. The BR 20’s first combat action was on the Nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War with the 35th bomber Group, named ‘Le Cicogne’, or Storks, hence the aircraft’s name. In its various versions, nearly 600 BR 20s were made, and some were exported, with small numbers flown by the air arms of China, Croatia, Hungary, Japan, Spain and Venezuela. The pic below shows an early BR 20...