By 1944 the Desert Fox had a new and near-impossible job: stopping the invasion of France. Sent to strengthen the Atlantic Wall — Hitler's much-advertised chain of coastal defences — Rommel found it far weaker than the propaganda claimed and threw himself into a frantic programme of mines, beach obstacles and gun positions. He had grasped the heart of the problem: Allied air power would make it nearly impossible to move reserves once the landings began, so the invasion had to be smashed on the beaches in the first day. He argued fiercely, and unsuccessfully, to place the panzer divisions right at the coast rather than hold them in reserve. "The first twenty-four hours," he warned, "will be decisive." He was right — and on 6 June 1944 he was absent, gone home to Germany for his wife's birthday when the blow fell.

K&C's set — the second of their Rommel vehicles — has the Field Marshal on a tour of inspection in Normandy in the camouflaged Mercedes-Benz 320 Cabriolet of the Panzer Lehr Division, in his general's greatcoat with bright red lapels, an aide-de-camp beside him carrying a briefcase of local maps and a Wehrmacht driver at the wheel. It pairs with K&C's standing Rommel, his superior in the West with whom he clashed over the panzers, Gerd von Rundstedt, and — across the beaches — the man whose invasion he was straining to stop, Montgomery, his old desert adversary. As the centrepiece of a Normandy or Atlantic Wall diorama, the staff car puts the German high command in the frame.

Model: WH107 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / car with three figures