Citroen H van now complete

With the suicide doors successfully hinged, I got carried away and made a functional sliding side door. This required a channel along the bottom of the door, and a second channel to trap the top of the door against the door frame. This involved a few false starts, but in the end it all worked out.



A decent kit, overall. The fiddly little bits are all well doweled and easily fitted without a lot of challenges, although the side view mirrors are frighteningly fragile, sticking out on little struts with no triangulation.



Readers of Tintin in the original French will recognise the Boucherie Sanzot decals, which I made from images I found on a website for Tintin enthusiasts. The original delivery van for Boucherie Sanzot was a VW, and at least one enthusiast has built a 1:1 replica, see here. I am not sure what the equivalent pun was in English.



I also decided that I would not bother with hinging the two rear doors and the tailgate. The doors are now glued in, and the tailgate has not been installed -- I'll decide later whether to pose it open or shut.



Overall, this is a decent curbside kit of an extremely utilitarian vehicle. The corrugated paneling, mostly flat or in single curvature, reminds one of the 2CV van which Ebbro also makes. The only compound curvature panel, which is the roof over the cab, has little dimples in the sides where the excess material had to be folded in. The overall objective, as with the Mini, was to maximise useful internal volume per square metre of roadway occupied, and I would say Citroen managed this challenge quite well. The FWD layout and the twist beam rear axle with integrated torsion bars played a big role in the very low load floor with lots of room between the inner fenders.

The completion ratio is now 34.6%, or 63 kits. Given I haven't ordered anything much lately, this is still heading in the right direction, although that could change ... stay tuned.