The photo of this beautiful truck comes from an unknown source on the web. There is no logic behind why I like things Soviet. I find that modern photos, like this one, are a good inspiration to capture that elusive "something" quality. Used. Imperfect. Dirty. Fragile. Real. Zis is short for Zavod Imeni Stalina or "plant of Stalin's name". I seem to recall this vehicle was modeled after the US Autocar truck. Wikipedia says it's origin is the Fiat F-15. I will revise once I check my references. In any case, this is the stripped down mid-war production version to save labor and materials. Much of the cab is wooden, the fenders folded tin sheet and war versions only had a single headlamp. It came in any color you wanted, as long as it was green. Simple and easy to maintain. Every one thinks the Germans were the masters of planning, reality shows the Soviets were better planners for the war by halting all new work on any vehicles not already in production. By doing this all their effort was focused on churning out what they knew would work. Nothing fancy, like this truck. (FYI, I did check what I think is my best reference, "Soviet trucks of WW2" a Tankograd Soviet special #2007. Jim and Jochen state that the AMO factory was renamed ZIS in honor of Stalin in 1931. The AMO 1 was based on the Fiat, the AMO 2 was based on the US Autocar truck. The Zis-5V started production in 1942. The "V" stands for Voenniy, or "military". J & J claim 81,646 Zis-5V's were built during the Great Patriotic War. Not bad for a crappy little truck).
The Kit I got for $5 dollars. It's a Toko kit and you probably could toss into any IPMS event and empty the area in 15 seconds. I have a big stack of plastic vehicles from that part of the world. They are slowly being replaced by Miniart, Hobbyboss and Tamiya.
The sprues come wrapped in a peculiar thin plastic that is unsettling. There are a number of sprues from what looks like some very tired tooling. Unbagging is like opening a time capsule, you can almost smell the cigarettes. Not unlike buying a model from someone on Ebay who has cats. But I digress.
It almost looks as if the masters were actually made using a hammer and sickle. Once the parts are removed, the sprue doubles as a screen to separate chaff from wheat.
Try the veal, I'll be here all week. In reality this kit stacks up pretty well against some of it's contemporaries, such as Nitto, Airfix and Frog. Why would anyone contemplate even building one of these dinosaurs? Well, there are several reasons: 1) When you build something like this you really have no choice but to improve it. These days the youngsters call this "modding" or "customisation", I call it craftsmanship. 2) Rebuilding forces you to look at the references, and you learn stuff, thus becoming a superior human, 3) There is a sense of accomplishment in spending 7 hours making a new muffler system and 4) I am using this model as a subject of a building demonstration at the Columbus 2015 IPMS Nationals.
...So here it is in all its bland gray glory. Built OOB. In the next post I will highlight using this build up what will be rebuilt. The OBB kit will be put side by side with the upgraded one, so you can see the differences. (I have always wanted to do that to see if all the work is really worth it). In addition, basic building techniques will also be called out. The goal is not to turn people into mindless rivet count'n constructo robots...it is rather to lay out processes and make seen what is normally hidden. And when you see it, you may say..."hmmm...I can do that". Just remember, it's your model (IMFM) and forget all the swine out there and build it to have fun. More on the swine, later.
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