Tank Girl's Vehicles - tank started!

[Weaver]

The enemy tanks were stripey PT-76s:



The one I want to build one of these years is the "Scorpion-on-steroids" from the early (pre-movie) comics.

[Weaver]

'Bout time this had an update. I've changed the title to include all vehicles from the Tank Girl books, not just the tanks. No actual building has taken place yet, you understand....

Tanks

Kit-wise, I now have two 1/48th Marders (APCs, not SPGs) and a King Tiger to butcher into a kind-of original Tank Girl's Tank, and two Grethas and a boot donor in 28mm white metal to Frankenstein into the sweet child herself... The body of an Airfix Vostok may well contribute (to the tank!) too.

Nothing has changed re Tankie's tank in recent books, except that the design has firmed up a bit with massively tall tracks. I have just realised that Rufus Dayglo was, at least in part, chanelling the Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle from Captain Scarlett when he came up with the Mk.III version.

In Visions of Booga, Barney has a WWII German Hanomag halftrack which is basically an Sd.Kfz.251/9 (the one with a stumpy 75mm next to the driver) with a couple of extra MG.42 mountings. Dead easy to model, of course, but like all Barney's vehicles, it gets crashed less than halfway through the book and is never seen again.

Also in Visions of Booga, the Australian Mafia have a DUKW, but it's so stock it's boring...


Planes

Kit-wise, got a 1/48th matchbox F-4J Fury to scaleorama into the HUGE version of Jet Girl's Jet as seen in TG.36, helped by bits of the Airfix Vostok's boosters.

There are various other versions of Jet Girl's Jet, the most common being one that looks like a slightly less scaled up Mig-15 body with a wierd, totally internal cockpit (mo canopy). Variants on this have a high wing and harrier style VTOL nozzles. There's an even more Harrier-esque version in Apocalypse, but like most thing therein (including the end of the world) it's never been seen since.

Various other flying machines have put in an appearance in the series, if mostly a brief, fiery one. This isn't the full list:

Jet Girl's Mini-Jet from The Gifting. Basically a mickey-take on James Bond's Little Nellie: look like an old sailplane cockpit with Harrier nozzles and lots of dakka. Also looks very buildable, possibly from a half-decent spares box...

Club Pemphigus' fighter-bomber from Bad Wind Rising. Only a freakin' scaled-down Vulcan with a Canberra B.2 cockpit!!!! Looks so doable it hurts, but it'd probably hurt the wallet too....

Agent 23's Microlite from Bad Wind Rising. Another mickey-take on Little Nellie, this is basically a cockpit with wheels and an pusher prop engine slung under a (rigid-looking) hang-glider wing. Doable, if you can find the wing..

Club Pemphigus's "Little Jelly" mini-copter from Bad Wind Rising. Another mick..oh put two and two together for Christ's sake... Scaleoram'd open-cockpit Gazelle, basically. A 1/72nd Airfix one modified for 28mm figures should work a treat, though where you find figures of humanoid kangaroos in mod parkas is up to you....

Various sacrificial gunship helicopters appear in various episodes, mostly flown by extras who's last job was wearing a red shirt in Star Trek. Common(ish) features are fenestron tails and a gap in the kevlar that allow the pilot to be shot in the wedding tackle with a pistol from half a mile away...  


Submarines

Sub Girl's Sub barely makes an appearence in the series (not a lot of subby oportunities in the outback) and is totally different every time it appears.

First version (in TG. 8 ) : a kind of giant Jacques Cousteau-style Diving Saucer with a clear canopy in the middle. I suspect it might be doable with one of these cheesy flying saucer kits, but I havn't looked to hard (yet).

Second version (in Apocalypse): dieselpunked WWII submarine. Doable, but not very inspiring....


Boats

Newest addition to the crew is Jackie aka Boat Girl, a hairdresser who just happens to have a WWII torpedo boat, which is why I just happened to buy a Revell 1/72nd PT-167 today. Not sure whether to leave it 1/72nd (which makes figures difficult) or scaleorama it to 28mm (which makes guns difficult). Basically, it's a USN torpedo boat with a HUGE sharkmouth, PT-109 serials (come in the Revell kit  ) and extra guns (who'd've thought it eh?). Ashley Wood's artwork tends to the sketchy, but from what you can make out, the guns seem to be .50 cal Brownings in M113 ACAV-style shields.


Cars

Most of the non-boring cars that appear in Tank Girl are full-size versions of 1970s diecast toys, mostly the funkier end of the Hot Wheels and Matchbox Superfast ranges. Examples appear all over the place, but particularly in Skidmarks, which shouldn't be a surprise since it's a coast-to-coast race story that's a take-off of the film Cannonball Run. I havn't even tried to identify all of them, but here are a few notables:

Wheel's car from Booga's Luck: Matchbox Soopa Coopa. Not enough of a car modeller to say how doable it is, but it doesn't look easy...

Joey Ramone's Beetle from Skidmarks: Matchbox Flying Bug (the one with a German helmet, tailplane and jet pods) with added WWI Spandaus on the bonnet. Looks VERY doable: you can get a Tamiya Beetle AND spandaus in 1/48th, and the tail and jet pods should scaleorama off an airliner/bizjet.

The Barneymobile from The Gifting and all the other stuff in Skidmarks: worthy of further research.....

Neil's bus from Visions of Booga: a 1939 International Harvester school bus painted every colour under the sun, with a sound system on the roof and "MUTHER" written on the destination board. If you don't know what this is a send-up of, then there's just no hope for you, man.... Modelling? No clue.....

Motorbikes

Most bikes in the series are generic non-identifiables, though with a general 1960s/1970s vibe. The only semi-consistent one is the Titchy Scooter which is a sort of pool vehicle for Tank Girl's crew. It's basically a titchy scooter, and would probably be pink if it was ever seen in colour. Jet Girl rides an utterly gorgeous Moto Guzzi rat bike in TG.36, but unfortunately, it looks like a modelling non-starter with NO kits of any relevent Guzzi ever having been made, as far as I can tell.

[Weaver]

Motorbikes

Most bikes in the series are generic non-identifiables, though with a general 1960s/1970s vibe. The only semi-consistent one is the Titchy Scooter which is a sort of pool vehicle for Tank Girl's crew. It's basically a titchy scooter, and would probably be pink if it was ever seen in colour. Jet Girl rides an utterly gorgeous Moto Guzzi rat bike in TG.36, but unfortunately, it looks like a modelling non-starter with NO kits of any relevent Guzzi ever having been made, as far as I can tell.

Applied a bit of lateral thinking here and bought a Starline 1/24th Moto Guzzi 850 Le Mans Mk.I, which is an Oxford-style ready-made "collector's" model in a display case. However, it's all-plastic rather than die-cast, so it should be possible to modify it with a bit of careful dismantling/wanton vandalisation of an irreplaceable classic motorcycle.... . Now need to identify and source the trail bike tank and seat unit used on Jet's rat (near impossible to source, I expect) and decide how to model the "good" lady herself. Preiser do a 1/24th scale "Eve" set which is basically a box of multi-part nude figures, but it's expensive and I'll probably only use 1/6th of it...

[Weaver]

Just got these lovelies from the Charity event on the Frothers forum:

http://frothersunite.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=45070



They are BEAUTIFUL castings. This is how good they can look when painted by someone infinitely better at it than me:







Bear in mind that the Booga figure is a whole 38mm from head to toe....


Other updates: I now have a 1/48th Tamiya VW Beetle to do Joey Ramone's Flying Bug, and I also scooped a 1/48th Revell Albatross dirt cheap as a gun-donor. As it happens, the Albatross's engine cowling may also provide the side-pods for the tank turret.

[zenrat]

So you haven't actually built anything...

This is the one I want to build.

Now I agree that while he may have had a Scorpion in mind when he started drawing I think that by the time he finished it bears more than a passing resemblance to an M551 Sheridan.

[Weaver]

Nope!  I keep getting the kits and putting more of the puzzle together, but I also keep getting distracted by other, easier stuff. The current approach is "wait until I've got my proper modelling room set up", but progress on that has been nil, so far.

I want to build the same one as you (my original pic seems to have disappeared), but I think it's pointless trying to be pedantic about detail since almost every drawing of it is different, even down to fundamentals like scale. Basically, you have to remember that it's an anarchic comedy cartoon and the primary purpose of any design in it is to serve the joke., so if Tankie's tank needs to fit in a garage, then it's car-sized, but if it needs a grotty student flat inside it, then it's barn-sized.

One of the generally consistent features is that it's tall, by virtue of the lower hull being very deep, with the idlers being full-sized road wheels. To this end I have two 1/48th Marders in the TG pile, then intention being to siamese them together. However my current thinking is that it'd actually be easier to sctachbuild the hull extension itself, and just use the second Marder for extra roadwheels and tracks. The turret will come from the 1/58th King Tiger hack described below, and the side jet-pods from hacked-about Vostock rocket halves. One feature of the original artwork that I can't live with is the D-shaped jet nozzles: mine will have circular ones that overlap the rear plate.

I think you could use the Sheridan to build something very much in the spirit of Tankie's tank. After all, the latter has ridiculously high performance and an unfeasably large gun and the Sheridan, whatever it's other failings, was certianly quick and over-gunned. It has the right, racey-posey "feel" to it. Later, post-movie versions of Tankie's Tank have a much longer gun barrel and a huge turret bustle, remeniscent of an M-47 or Walker Bulldog. The Sheriden's isn't quite that prominent, but it's certainly in the right ball-park.

The Sheriden's turret would also be suitable (I think) for another idea I had for the later, Rufus Dayglo-era "racing-tank", which is to use a 1/24th scale Lancia Stratos rally car as the hull... You can see the 1970s rally-car lights influence as far back as the image you posted. Unfortunately, the Tamiya kits seem to be long OOP and go for collector's prices....

[Captain Canada]

Never heard of Tank Girl....but some of the stuff sure looks interesting !\\Love the new figures you've got...especially the painted one with the Airfix club jacket !

And who's building a Sheridan ? I have always liked that tank ever since I got a half-built 35th scale one as a kid.

[Weaver]

Tank Girl is crazywierdsexyfunnyrude! Maybe it doesn't seem so radical post-South Park, but at the time it came out it was really WTF!!! The "Airfix Glue Club" t-shirt and/or jacket appear in a few of the Tank Girl strips: it's all part of the "1970s kitsch" vibe that runs through it (bear in mind that the strip started in 1989, well before Airfix's current revival).

[zenrat]

... I think it's pointless trying to be pedantic about detail since almost every drawing of it is different, even down to fundamentals like scale. Basically, you have to remember that it's an anarchic comedy cartoon and the primary purpose of any design in it is to serve the joke., so if Tankie's tank needs to fit in a garage, then it's car-sized, but if it needs a grotty student flat inside it, then it's barn-sized...

That's why it's a good build.  Hard to nit pick.
I was disappointed that the movie tank was so unlike the cartoon one.

[Weaver]

I was disappointed that the movie tank was so unlike the cartoon one.

Practicalities I guess. Although the original design was clearly based on a Scorpion, there's also something of the M113 FSV about it (it has a rear ramp and lots of space inside), which would be perfect since it's set in Aus. Unfortunately the filming was in the US and shipping one over would probably have doubled the budget. Ironically the crappy Zhengdefu Marders I'm going to use DON'T have a rear ramp, even though every Marder ever has one... WTF?!!!

[NARSES2]

Wonderfull painting on those figures. Thanks for posting 

[Weaver]

Look what I just found on-line  :



From here: http://www.returnofthecaferacers.com/2012/03/tank-girl-ready-to-do-ton.html

[zenrat]

Nice.
I'm trying to workout what the engine is meant to be.  It looks like a narrow angle V twin like a Matchless Silver Hawk.
Which would make this a Norchless or a Matchton...

[PR19_Kit]

An Ariel Square Four maybe? That would make it a Norial....... 

[kitnut617]

Looks like a Manx Norton to me, some had two spark plugs