Jeepers (scale) Creepers

First off, apologies for the awful pun in the title of this post, I couldn't help myself.

Having just finished one jeep from the matchbox/revell 17 pounder kit, I couldn't resist trying another one.  This time the Hasegawa Jeep and 37mm gun (which I haven't built yet).  It's a fairly basic kit, not strong on detail, but it was very quick to assemble (one evening, not including spray painting the base coat on the sprues) and gives a nice result, ideal for wargaming, it feels pretty robust.

The kit also comes with the 37mm anti-tank gun that was used by US forces early in the war (but quickly replaced with a version of the British 6 pounder) and a trailer with lots of spare jerry cans etc.  Another nice feature of the kit is it comes with 8 'crew'.  There are only 3 poses (drivers, an officer/NCO with binoculars and someone either signaling or waving in a somewhat camp manner...) and they're pretty simple sculpts.  However they paint up OK (as the driver in the above photo attests) and will be useful for all those kits that don't include drivers, crew etc.  I added a passenger to this one from the HaT US Tank Riders set as well, just for completeness.

Which leads me on to questions of scale.  The trouble with using '20mm' kits for gaming is the weird split in standards between 1:72 and 1:76 (made even worse by certain companies that describe one as the other).  The two jeeps I've just completed are a great example of the issue, with the the Revell one clearly being 1:76 (and apparently driven by a midget, even if allowance is made for rationing in the UK!), and the Hasegawa 1:72.  Here are some comparison shots to show what I mean.

At least it won't be a problem with these two, as they're unlikely to be put on the table at the same time, but it means that units of the same vehicle need to be carefully planned out.  It will be interesting to see how the matchbox M16 I'll probably build next compares with its Italeri M3 cousins.