The 1:35th Scale Ferret

A fascinating vehicle loved by modellers because of it’s small size and many guises. It also wore several interesting colour schemes throughout its long life, from the Malayan Emergency to the vehicles’ swansong in the first Gulf War [Operation Granby/Desert Storm] in 1990/1.

In an otherwise seemingly well researched article in the September 2023 edition of ‘Airfix Modelworld’, Kev Smith writes ‘The Ferret Scout Car hasn’t been well served by model manufacturers, with just Accurate Armour issuing a resin kit in the late 1990s’.

Wrong. In fact there have been Ferrets from at least two other manufacturers. Cromwell Models and Dartmoor Military Models and the latter kit goes back to 1986 or earlier. We are very happy to have purchased the Dartmoor Military Models vehicle range back in 1996, including their Ferret kits – now part of our Firing Line range.

The kits still stands up as one of the best of the resin Ferret kits produced. It does share with the Cromwell kit the fact there is no interior detail below the turret – but you can’t see it anyway! Since then we have upgraded the kits even further and added much finer resin and etched detail to all the variants we cover – the Mk.2 Scout Car, the Mk.1/2 Recce Vehicle and the Mk2/6 Vigilant Missile Equipped version. We are also just releasing a new Mk.1/2 kit with some Operation Granby/Desert Storm add-ons.

Overwhelmingly, these are the kits we would choose for our own models of the Ferret, the new Airfix kit notwithstanding!

The Airfix kit is definitely a ‘curate’s egg’ – good in parts, but it is in no way comparable to some of the recent aircraft releases from the Airfix stable.

For this kit we are releasing a whole range of sets with maximum versatility, to enable you to detail exactly what parts of the kit you choose, and to convert it to no less that three other variants. Let’s face it, the kit is not too expensive by today’s standards, and so you might think it worth spending a little money on!