"Rare armoured cars for the Far East" Topic

3D printing is now making it possible to add more rare vehicles to games/collections. I have a reasonable collection for the Far East, where, in the case of the British, equipment was much the same as that used in other theatres. The main differences tend to be in the early part of the war you will see vehicles from the inter war period more frequently as the Far East was always the last to get the more modern equipment (in a similar way, later, weapons that were obsolete against the Germans often were still effective against Japanese equipment and so tanks like the Lee/Grant were still in service).

In this particular case I have a Lanchester armoured car that would have seen service in Malaya. A vehicle more suited to roads and meeting the needs of colonial policing they nonetheless were pressed into use when the Japanese invaded.

Next is something even more unique. This is an armoured car made locally in Hong Kong by the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corp, a unit composed of expatriates many of whom were British veterans of the First World War. Five were made and all saw service fighting the Japanese (all knocked out in the process).

And as a size comparison with the larger Lanchester.

Those are very nicely done, TacticalPainter. It's good to see something "new" in WWII miniatures.

One of the great things about 3d printing is that you can get odd ball stuff.

Very nice!

very cool, thanks for sharing! Where did you get the 3D files, or order the prints?

The Lanchester is very iconic for Malaya but the Hong Kong A/C is just inspired and new to me. What great research to produce both.

very cool, thanks for sharing! Where did you get the 3D files, or order the prints?

Thanks. I didn't print these myself. The Lanchester came from Dark Castle Terrain here in Australia. I understand they print these under licence from wargaming3D from Ukraine. The HKVDC armoured car was printed by a friend using an STL bought from Sabotag3D in the UK.

The Lanchester is very iconic for Malaya but the Hong Kong A/C is just inspired and new to me. What great research to produce both.

Two very informative articles here in this issue of the Armored Car Journal from 1992 PDF link

I was already aware of the HKVDC home made armoured cars but stumbled across these when doing more research.

Also had a chance to see the Lanchester at the Tank Museum at Bovington last year. It's a remarkably large vehicle, but quite elegant.

Good going.

As an addendum, the Lanchester is a replacement for an earlier resin model that I acquired a few years ago. I can't actually recall the manufacturer, but it seem incorrect in so many respects. Scale is out, that's for sure. The turret is also odd and appears too large. It has little to recommend it and that's only highlighted when put alongside the new model.