Of all the ‘Smudges’ that were rolled out of the manufacturing facilities in Spain during the civil war the Echevarria models hold a special place in my heart.
They were the first ones that I saw, the first one that I decided I must have and the first one that I did actually purchase from a Spanish company… who shall not be named on account of them trying to get my passport details… which of course was duly reported to Interpol… but that aside let me introduce you to our new offerings.
So the first of the Echevarrias that we have on offer is the bog-standard vanilla echevarria that we all know and love from the photographs that are the easiest to find of the Echevarrias and incidentally the most produced version. This is the version that you can commonly see crossing the stone bridge around Ochandiano as a part of the Orduña column.
This version was missing the armour skirts protecting the rear wheels and only sported three rifle hatches on each side of the truck.
The second main version can only be found on a single photograph (that I know of anyway) and has full armoured skirts, roof hatches and four weapon hatches on each side of the vehicle. The one in the photograph is purportedly known as ‘Pancho Villa’ after the Mexican revolutionary shown daubed down the left hand side of one of these abandoned infront of a garage entrance
If you are interested in scooting through a number of images of these beauties without having to shell out on the Los Medios Blindados en la Guerra Civil Espanola book series I can highly recommend the website of one of our clients; Juam Pepin at https://vehiculosblindadosdelaguerracivil.blogspot.com/. His website is an absolute mine of information and Ive been using it as a part of my research for years now.
So the last version of course is the very famous Sanidad Militar version. It was deemed wise to have a protected way of extracting the injured from the battlefield and as a result they decided that the Echevarria would be an ideal test bed to try this out. This version retained the roof hatches but dispensed with the gunports on the side of the vehicle
Incidentally the most famous photograph of one of these Sanidad Militar’s is frequently mislabelled as a Naval-Somua so many of us may have overlooked this vehicle. I would urge you to go and take a look though as it is quite a cool looking vehicle.
So… where can you purchase these fine looking vehicles that we provide in all the scales you could ask for, from I hear you ask? Well let me provide you a link straight to the range of Tiznaos that we offer for your pleasure:
https://bayonetsandbrushes.co.uk/store/the-rif-spanish-civil-war-land/tiznaos-land/
Good hunting ladies and gentlemen…
