Polski-Fiat 518 and 508 in Progress!

I hit a major milestone with the Polski-FIAT 518 truck this afternoon and wanted to go ahead and get a couple of photos of the beast out in the wild. At this point the bed is done and the hood / engine covers are done. The basic roof shape is cut out but not attached. The doors, grill, and final details are not yet done. I've also been working on updating the True North 508 Staff Car just a bit.

First up is a picture of the staff car and the truck together. I've added rifles to the staff car, and I've modified the blank wheels with one with the distinctive radial pattern seen on the real thing. I'm making up a lot of extra wheels at this point so I can just use the resin copies on the staff cars and then use the regular metal wheels to supplement the trucks

I picked up a 1/35th scale kit of the 518 truck to use as a template. I reverse engineered my own plans and then cut the pieces of of styrene sheet. The bed of the truck is wood, so I went ahead and used some toothpicks to create the bed.

I've also modified a few wheels to act as the characteristic expanded hub wheels seen on some (but not all) 518 trucks. I made a resin copy of the 508 staff car's front fenders to use as a template, but they still took a fair amount of surgery to get looking right.

The final product, at least this time around, will be in the Battlefront vein with a sealed driver's compartment. This will make painting, construction, and casting much easier as all I'll have to add are the wheels and maybe the front bumper.  I'm hoping to have the 518 together by the weekend to start casting up. Then I may try the truck based on the 508.