Stoelzel's Structures SUVs

I recently made my first vehicles produced by Stoelzel's Structures - five SUVs. SUV stands for Sports Utility Vehicle and these have been on my "to do" list for a long time. I was delighted to see that Carl had included the SUV in his Auto Park set, as I had a very specific use for a number of these vehicles. I wanted a fleet of them to transport my Men in Black (see my previous three posts). I was just going to make four of them, but after a chat with my friend Mathyoo, he asked if I'd be making a yellow SUV as well? I knew I wanted my MiB vehicles to be black and was curious to know why he asked about a yellow SUV. He replied that the heroes used a yellow SUV in the film Zombieland. How could I have forgotten? He was right! Technically speaking, they drove a civilian Humvee but it does look very like Carl's SUV. So I ended up making five SUVs and here they are.

Vampifan has just got out of the yellow SUV to face down my full complement of Men in Black (still in their vehicles). Does he have a death wish? In truth, he's only here to give a sense of scale to the models. When I printed out my yellow SUV, I did not like how the yellow came out. It was far too dull and very dark. So I repainted all the yellow bits with Foundry acrylic paints in a mix of lemon, yellow and light orange. I'm much happier with this colour scheme, although I need to touch it up in a few places, which I'll point out below.

The four SUVs have had their roofs painted a nice solid black. They looked too grey to me but now you can tell straightaway that these are black SUVs.

The trickiest part of making these SUVs was with the front windscreen. For all the card vehicles I have previously made the windscreen has been flat. Carl, however, decided his models should have curved windscreens. No question about it, this is more realistic, however, it does present a challenge if you like to reinforce your models as I do. I like to reinforce my card vehicles with 2mm thick mounting card. This does not bend well, so for the windscreens I reinforced them with thin card. It still strengthened them and also allowed me to bend them into shape. The windscreens were undoubtedly the trickiest and fiddliest part of the vehicle to make. I have to admit that some of my windscreens came out better than others but overall, I managed okay with them all.

The black lines that I painted on the side of my yellow SUV are far too thick and messy. I shall rectify my mistake soon. I still remain undecided about whether to paint a number three on the two front doors of my yellow SUV as per the Zombieland SUV (see photo below).

Until I saw this photo I hadn't realised I had smudged some yellow paint on the rear window of the SUV to the left. That's another mistake that needs cleaning up. You could argue that they should all have different number plates but be honest, when you see these on a gaming table who on earth is going to notice their number plates? It doesn't bother me and it shouldn't bother you.

The comments I made about my paintwork on the opposite side of the yellow SUV apply equally to this side. I am normally a much neater painter than this and I'm not happy with my sloppy paint work. It bugs me so much that I will clean up my mess.
As I mentioned in the intro, I had never made a Stoelzel's Structures vehicle before. The Auto Park set contains a car sales room, car wash and garage repair shop as well as 10 different types of vehicle, each with a minimum of 10 different colour schemes. Great value for money for just £5.74. The curved windscreen will cause a problem to newbie modellers but other than that, construction is pretty straight forward. For a long time now I have wanted a fleet of black SUVs and there was never any doubt that they'd be the first vehicles I made from Carl's excellent set. I plan on making a lot more vehicles from this set in the future.

Here is the Humvee as used in Zombieland, with Wichita (Emma Stone) by the front door. It is not the same as Carl's SUV but it is a close match. I might modify mine to make it an even closer match. After all, I have three of the four heroes from the film already (Columbus, Tallahassee and Wichita). Do you think I should go the whole hog and convert it into the Zombieland SUV? My feelings are that I should. Then I can at least, rephotograph it with a cleaned up paint job!