Diecast Delights: УАЗ-450 in 1:43 Scale

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I enjoy model cars, particularly because I don’t own an actual barn and acres of land on which to keep a motley selection of invaluable (well, of no value, anyway) vehicles of 1:1 scale. And I’m not alone. Fortunately, the world is flooded with offering to satisfy the weird vehicular tastes of even the most wrong-minded of folk.

So without further ado, it’s time for another quick dalliance with the wonderful world of miniature Cold War Russian utility vehicles

This is a УАЗ (UAZ)-450, the precursor to the 452 and with it the 3909 we saw quite recently in this series. It may just look like an innocuous, harmless Carpet Fitter’s van, with those whimsical images on the sides, but during the cold war the truth could have been far more sinister. Let’s take a look at the prototype.

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Who could guess what might have been going on behind that blank metal panelling. Let’s suppose we’re actually looking at a mobile command post for Myasishchev M-50 Bounders (the terrifying long range bomber that everybody initially feared to be nuclear fuelled but turned out to be conventional turbojet and which never reached series production anyway), or perhaps a mobile interrogation unit with heavy sound deadening so nobody could hear your hopeless screams.

Or it could just be a carpet fitter’s van, I suppose.

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The model itself betrays the massive number of identical models churned out by this Chinese modelling concern (IXO, I believe) every hour, and the variable quality control in force. Furthermore, I suspect my source for this one may well have taken possession of three or four thousand factory rejects. One of the plastic windscreen wipers, for example, is missing. As is the tow hitch at the back. But I’ll forgive those as the actual UAZ depicted could well have just lost countless bits of itself, through wear or carelessness, over the years of torture it was likely to have suffered.

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Aside from MIA componentry, the model is basically sound. The wheels, in black plastic, don’t jump out as especially detailed, but are (although somebody has clearly stolen the hubcaps) and wear convincing rubber treads. The casting itself is accurate, the paint is even and not too glossy, the silvered finish on the front and rear bumpers look great and who can resist those retro-tastic carpet fitter decals?

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Again, eBay is positively groaning under the weight of these things, and there’s little reason to leave one of these out of your communist van collection.

 [Close-Up Images: Copyright 2014 Hooniverse/Chris Haining]

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