Carnivàle Truck 1

My all-time favourite tv series is HBO's brilliant Carnivàle. Conceived by Daniel Knauf, its about a travelling freakshow/circus in Dust Bowl America, but it has a huge mythology built into it focussing on the battle between good and evil, freewill and destiny.  It was cancelled two series in, but those two series contain some of the most well styled and well mapped-out drama that I've seen.

The vehicles in the series are some of its most striking and memorable elements, and were greatly praised for their authenticity and accuracy, and while most of them have been identified by fans over the net, the main 'Lead Truck' has remained a bit of a mystery apart from that it was made by Relay Motor Trucks.  For some reason I got it into my head that I wanted to make a model of this particular truck and make it as screen accurate as possible.  So, when after a few hours of googling got me nowhere, I realised that I was going to have to improvise and kitbash the truck from a number of sources.  The closest two kits that I could find were the Miniart 1:35 Gaz AA (which appeared to be a Russian built version of a Ford truck) and an Ark Models 1:32 Zis-5 (which appeared to be a copy of an Autocar truck, who were direct competitors of Relay, a pretty good base for my build)

After selecting my two kits to use, I spent the next three or four hours wading through all 24 episodes, taking screen dumps of every time the truck appears on screen.  Not having any real interest or understanding of motor vehicles, these screen dumps would be my main source of information and help me to understand this project as it progressed.

The Zis-5 would provide the main cab and chassis for my truck with a few alterations;
-The wheel-base of the truck would need extending by a little over 30mm (which in turn meant extending a lot of levers and axles and mechanical doohickies)
- The windscreen area would need to be completely rebuilt .
- The panel detailing on the doors and cab would need removing and rebuilding.
- The wheels from the Gaz-AA would replace the ones from the Zis-5, the bumper, steering wheel, headlights and some small detailing parts would be used from the Gaz too.
- The radiator grill would need a new emblem sculpting for it.
While a lot of these changes and parts wouldn't give me a 100% accurate representation of the truck, they would get me a whole lot closer to it than the Zis-5 would on its own.

Then the hard work would begin, scratchbuilding the main storage area of the truck.