Bergonzoli's Caravan

I approve of this conversion.

Well, here we all are then. Going on with my minor obsession with the North African Campaign at the moment, I went a bit mad on eBay and bought (at outrageous prices) both "Monty's Caravan" in it's original Matchbox box and the insanely pricey Italeri 90mm dual purpose gun on the Lancia 3RO Chassis.

The raw materials.

The idea is to create a command vehicle for my Italians. It's mentioned in the Matchbox instructions that the caravan body originally belonged to Annibale "barba elettrica" Bergonzoli, but was captured by a flying column of 7th Armoured Division in February 1941 after Beda Fromm. From (no pun) there it went to an HQ ordanance depot in Egypt where it was demounted from it's Lancia 3R0 chassis and popped onto a Leyland Retreiver 4x6.

I intend to reverse that conversion with one of my own!

Having, as I said before, spent a huge sum on these two kits I was more than a little nervous at the prospect of fit.

Gingerly mating the chassis with the floor. Easy, easy does it...

But all's well so far.

Here's one I prepared earlier.

You may note that the van body test fitted has a spider web in the rear window. It's another I meant as a straight out-of-the-box build that got set aside "some time ago".

Mock not the mock-up.

And here we are in full mock-up mode with all the major bits test-fitted. I might change out those rear mud-flapd for fully round mud-guards from one of the Airfix RAF sets. As I build the new caravan body, I will blank off the windows which gives a better look than just the bare, undetailed interior. I suppose for the sake of consistency that I ought to do the same to the cab.