1:35 Lancia 3Ro rear road wheels flat tires (type 2)

Deflated rubber as the teller of the scene

Variant number two brings a different rendering of the tread from its sister set and aims again at the rear doubling. The tire is presented empty: where on an inflated tire the wall arches outward, here it sinks inward and beds down to the road with a broad footprint. The difference is visible on the finished model from a meter away.

Where such a detail fits

An empty wheel gives away at once that the vehicle has been standing longer than its crew would like. It works on damaged equipment at the verge, at a collecting point for wrecks, on a column stuck in sand. With Italian heavy vehicles that goes double, because punctures belonged to the daily routine of the North African campaign and period photographs are full of machines with sagging wheels.

The subject and the build

The chassis of this truck served the Italian army also as a carrier for a large 90 mm anti-aircraft gun, which from the height of the bed could be turned against ground targets as well. The basic version nonetheless remained the main one and carried ammunition boxes, water drums and soldiers. During the build watch that all the settled wheels stand at the same height above the base. The safest course is to stand the vehicle on a flat board and glue the wheels on as the last step. A deflated tire moreover behaves differently under a layer of dust too: where the wall breaks, the dirt settles in the fold, while the taut surfaces stay cleaner. A barely noticeable difference in shade is enough and the wheel stops looking like a casting. The same approach works on mud as well, only there the transition between the clean and the fouled surface tends to be sharper.