Zvezda 1/100 (15mm) Matador Truck - a review..

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The Matador was built as an artillery tractor by Associated Equipment Company (who are probably most famous for being the builder of those iconic London red buses), for use by British and Commonwealth troops during WWII, so they are not strictly valid for the use to which I am about to put them, but they'll do..

This was a big old beast - 10 ton - and to fulfil the gun towing requirement was fully 4 x 4. AEC built nearly 9000 of them in total, the majority going to the army but a few went to the RAF. It also had a few interesting variations - in the desert they used them with a 6Pdr anti-tank gun on the back in a portee role (this was called "Deacon"), some of them were also converted to use as command posts (I have one of these see following)

AEC Matador converted to armoured command vehicle - designated "Dorchester" (after the hotel!)
- this one is Minifgs 10mm, and in my WWII North Africa collection

So what do we get in the Zvezda box when we open it - something very similar to follows - in fact exactly like this...  

Two sprues, instructions, and a couple of cards with detail for Zvezda's own WWII rules...  once the parts are taken off the sprues (I use a scalpel) you end up with the following:

Very clever - no glue is needed - the fit is absolutely superb...  there's some very clever pieces of design int his kit - a couple of little cross members that provide support to both floor, side panels and roof in particular...  the cab is a triumph - five panels plus roof to give that unique shape...

So when it goes together it looks like this - fit is very good - if I was anal I might want to fill those gaps but happily I'm not...

 

Last of all, a couple of pictures of the completed model with some 15mm infantry for scale comparison