A little bit of research shows the body to be a fairly good representation of a 1983-and-a-half year model Toyota truck, known as the Hilux in most of the world, but referred to as a Mojave in the USA.
For the time being I'm just going to rebuild it using most of the original parts. I'll leave off the superfluous exhaust pipes and the empty 'spare wheel' cover, and try to give it a military hue. The main jobs to do beyond repainting the body are to fill the hole in the bonnet, make a new headlight grille, and do something with the rather over-sized front bumper.
As a fan of Nikkos higher quality stuff I can say this is a good strudy chassis based on their F10 buggy chassis which itself is a copy of the Tamiya Grasshopper/Hornet chasis with Tamiya Wild One style trailing arms at the front.
ReplyDeleteIt actually has one up on the Tamiya as the diff gears are metal vs nylon.
The buggy version was even sold by Traxxas as the Cat and Spirit and Graupner asd the Fun Racer.