1/35 Tamiya Special Air Service Jeep

Gallery Article by Angelo M Picardo on Feb 20 2013

 

I built Tamiya's SAS Jeep many years ago and in those days my models were as much play things as they were display pieces.  It ended up broken and lost.

I wanted an SAS Jeep in my collection but the old Tamiya kit was showing its age, especially when compared to their new issue of the vehicle so, I decided to use Tamiya's new kit as the base for the SAS vehicle I wanted.

I know there are resin conversion sets available to convert Tamiya's new model, but I wanted to avoid them if at all possible so I raided my spares box and found nearly everything I needed.

The .50 Browning and its mounting came from the Academy US Machine gun set, my spares box was full of jerry cans and kit bags; helmets, water bottles; weapons and all the other kit you would find on these Jeeps.

I collected all the items I needed, then started to convert the Jeep.

 

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There are plenty of reference photos on the internet of these heavily modified vehicles and I used them to convert my model.

The radiator grill bars were cut away and a condenser was added using more parts from the spares box.

Other modifications were to leave off the windscreen and rear seat and as the tilt cover was not fitted either, the folded up canvas was not placed under the passenger's seat.
The only parts I had problem sourcing were the Vicker's K guns.

I could not find any aftermarket ones in 1/35th so I bought Italeri's Commando Car, which is a late war European version of the SAS Jeep, and was fairly inexpensive.
This comes with 5 K guns so I had the ones I needed for my project. 

The only other after market product I purchased specifically was Eduard's etched set for the original Tamiya SAS Jeep.

I brought all the parts together and assembled my raider as a generic SAS vehicle, painting it with Humbrol enamels.

Various shades of sand was used to represent how these machines were made from parts that were begged, borrowed and stolen from a number of sources, including German weapons and equipment.

The main conversion was the racks for the numerous jerry cans carried.  Eduard's set provided these racks, along with the sand trays, and various other fittings and fixtures.

For the base I used an 8" square artist's canvas. I built up the ground work with polystyrene tile, covered in patching plaster and I used cat litter for the rocks. The base was painted with Tamiya acrylics and weathered with Mig pigments.

The two SAS Troopers are from Master Box's LRDG set.  They are wearing the same style of clothing as the SAS did and were perfect.  They were painted with Humbrol enamels and Tamiya acrylics.

Angelo M Picardo

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Photos and text © by Angelo M Picardo