1:100 ZIS-5 Soviet Truck

The vehicle that carried almost everything

Few machines have such an inconspicuous and at the same time indispensable place in the history of Soviet equipment. The three-ton truck from the Moscow car plant began to be built in the first half of the 1930s and stayed in production long after the war. It was powered by a spark-ignition six-cylinder engine of around 5.5 liters, whose modest output was offset by its ability to digest fuel of miserable quality.

The ice road

Vehicles of this type had their best-known chapter on the frozen surface of Lake Ladoga, where they kept up the link with besieged Leningrad along a worn ice road. They drove in convoy, with the cab doors open in case the ice should break under the vehicle. It was precisely this episode that gave the whole type a reputation no combat vehicle ever gained.

A note on the small size

A vehicle in this format measures barely a few centimeters and its assembly is a matter of a moment. The result is decided rather by the surface finish than by the accuracy of the fit: a wooden bed gains when the basic brown tone is broken up with two or three shades along the individual planks.

The glass of the cab tends to be treated at this size only as a frame, so a dark shade inside the opening is enough. Anyone building a whole convoy will appreciate that small trucks can be set apart by the load on the bed, by a tarpaulin or by a crew, and still come from one mold. Supply vehicles tend to be overlooked in scenes, and yet it is precisely they that give a scene its scale and explain why the combat equipment is standing there at all.