Yellow German combat vehicles?

I wonder if it was zinc chromate paint? That was a typical primer used on aircraft of that period, but I don't know if the Germans would've used it on ground vehicles. A couple modeling sites (those guys usually get pretty aggressive in their research) say the US used zinc chromate primer, but Germans used reddish brown primer. So it's not looking good for the Rat Patrol German vehicles.

Might well have been the film stock making the colors go screwy. German vehicles in North Africa were painted a yellowish-tan, and DAK uniforms weren't khaki, but a shade of what in the US would be considered light olive.

Sometimes the lighting can make wardrobe and props appear to be colors that they aren't. As an example, uniforms made for Gods and Generals were in some cases made darker than the originals were in order to appear the correct color on film, since the lights on set can make some colors look washed out. I know this for a fact, since a friend of mine in my old Civil War reenacting group bought some unused items made for G and G, and instead of being Federal dark blue, they were effectively black. A similar situation would be found on Star Trek, as the line division uniform shirts were olive green, but photographed gold. The trousers worn by the male cast members were (sources vary on this) either dark gray or dark olive green and photographed black.

What does that have to do with yellow German vehicles and cream colored DAK uniforms? Simple. They may have been painted the right colors, and just photographed oddly. As to the uniforms, well, probably the costumers assumed that DAK uniforms were khaki, and faded them to appear used. The Luftwaffe and other German forces in North Africa DID use khaki, but it was a brownish (and some originals I've seen looked almost burnt orange) khaki...which faded to the color of American khakis (which themselves faded almost white). The Afrika Korps was a Heer unit, and drew its supplies separately from the Luftwaffe, Waffen-SS or Kriegsmarine, so the light olive color of their uniforms at the beginning of the North African campaign is understandable (and as I understand it, between dust, being washed occasionally in gasoline and fading, those uniforms eventually looked khaki, too).

1960's TV...y'just gotta love it.

"It's a hard country, kid.

I took it to be a failed attempt at making the vehicles and uniforms look sun-bleached.

And, bizarrely, not every German vehicle was yellowish. They broke this rule for at least one episode that I remember: in The Exhibit A Raid, war criminal Beckman the Beast's Horch staff car is in field gray colors unlike every other German vehicle in the series.

I mean, really, how many times will you look under Jabba's manboobs?