The Revell Unimog kit is well known and is available in several different versions (fire truck, canvas covered box, etc). This version is relatively civilised, with 130 hp Diesel motor and the ability to keep up with traffic. I built one up as a crane base, using Italeri's truck accessory kit.
But the first Unimog, the 401, was only modeled once, in 2000, by a German or Dutch company called Lassen Project, and was the company's only kit. (Instructions are in German only).
So I found out about this kit only when I saw one for sale on the Interwb, and had to have it as part of my "oddball" collection. I was also interested because when I worked at the Mercedes Benz dealer in 1975-76, we had a Mog for clearing snow and hauling cars in off the lot. (It got replaced by a CJ-5). It was essentially a tractor decked out for the street (if not the highway): 25 hp 1.8 litre Diesel, 6 forward and 2 reverse gears, and so-called portal axles with the drive axle well above the wheel centreline and driving the wheels through reduction gear sets. This provides tremendous ground clearance as the diffs are not on the same centreline as the wheels.
Power takeoffs were standard front and rear and you can find online pictures of Mogs with haybalers, snowblowers and hedge trimmers mounted to the bumpers. All of this means there are about 5 gearshift levers in the cab... Finally the ground clearance, torque-tube drives and zero overhang meant it could crawl up and over just about anything, as long as you didn't try to exceed 50 km/h.
The kit is very detailed. I added plumbing for the injector pump, otherwise it's out of box. Sadly most of this will be hidden once the cab is on.
From the sublime to the ridiculous... all in all this is clearly agricultural. On the to the bodywork, such as it is. Stay tuned!
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