Icelandic trucks

Some of you may remember my post on off-road trucks commonly found in Iceland, here. These are mounted on huge high-flotation tires suitable for taking groups of people on treks over soft snow, fording glacial rivers with soft mucky riverbanks, and crossing crevasses in glaciers. Besides being exceedingly utilitarian, these look very cool indeed. I immediately thought how nice it would be to build something like this.




Seven people in the go-anywhere Expedition, or 21 in the on-road mini bus?
Note these are both 1:1 scale, no fooling around here.
Anyway I think I know which I'd want.

So the bits are now pretty much in place: I've had an AMT 1/25 Chevy Cameo and the appropriate 1953 Chevy Suburban body from Jimmy Flintstone for some time now; all that was missing was the jacked up 4X4 chassis. I recently acquired Aoshima's 1/24 Toyota Hilux club cab with so-called 'Lift-Up' suspension which appears to have the same wheelbase as the Cameo, even though the scale is not quite the same, and the tires probably have more tread than the typical Icelandic truck. However I'd say it's close enough, and not having to scratch build the suspension is a bonus. Plus it comes with fender lips I can use to carve out the Suburban body fender wells. A Pontiac 421 Tri-Power from the  bin will provide the forward motion (the Aoshima kit is curbside, and anyway the motor is probably a 4-cylinder Diesel).




If all goes well, the only bit I'll need from the Cameo is the windshield, leaving lots of bits for future kitbashing activities. For that matter there is a lot of curvature in the windshield, but it isn't a compound curve, so I ought to be able to make it from a sheet of thin clear stock.

Meanwhile back to the Honda S800 -- I do after all have to start completing stuff.