Wow!  I built one of those 40 years ago.  Along with a Kettenkraftrad and a BMW with a sidecar.  I did them on a commision.  I thought they were very good kits.  I still have 2 of them, un-built, along with couple of the motorcycles and a Kettenkraftrad.   Maybe, someday.  I did it when my kid was born.  She turns Forty this week.  I wonder what ever happened to them.  I know I made good money back in the day.

I started working on it yesterday and it is a well detailed kit but there are way to many parts, tiny parts that make it very annoying, no need for so many parts for something that can be moulded as one. i remember building the 1/9 kettrenkrad was the same thing just way too many unnessery parts.

The Kubel is pretty typical of ESCI molding back in the early '70s - a little heavy with the flash and parting lines;s bits are a bit out of round/square; some  parts may not be perfectly flat; and a lot of sub-assemblies are molded in halves, so there's a lot of cleaning and dressing those bits, which can slow down the build, depending on how picky you want to be.

The old ESCI kit was molded in a few different colors, so there were tan, black, and metallic colored sprues. Italeri has molded theirs in the standard grey, which makes things a bit easier. They also cleaned up the instruction sheet to make things much clearer and easier to understand.

I'd noticed that a lot of the body panels were relatively free of ejector pin marks, because a lot of those marks wound up being located on the mating edges of the parts. There are both raised and recessed marks, so test fit often and adjust the fit as necessary before reaching for the glue.

Speaking of glue, consider using either a thicker glue or sprue-goo for larger assemblies. I used the goo and it adds a lot of strength to the joint, as well as greatly reducing the amount of putty I would have otherwise used.

Overall, it's a pretty well detailed kit, but considering the sheer size of things, it's a prime candidate for super-detailing if you want to test your scratch-building talents. 

Revell (Germany) now owns a big pile of ESCI & Italeri moulds.

I ordered one its by Italeri I think the same kit as revell etc. should get it tomorrow

Thanks

Probably would take a manual search as I'm finding nothing using the (terrible) Serch tool

I know one was written up extensively--but can't remember if it was Armor or Dioramas.

There was at least one in the magazine, but that's going to be before 2010.

Here's some info:  https://indy-amps.weebly.com/esci-19th-scale-vw-type-82-kubelwagen.html (just not a WIP)

Not much on YT, strangely.  And that, despite being a Revell/ESCI release in Europe, too.

According to scalemates it was first released by ESCI in 1976. It has a lot of moveable features and a fabric roof.