Lindberg 1/25 Dodge L-700 Tanker

The strange and fairly rare L-Series medium-duty Trucks were based on the A-100 series of light duty trucks. What is so interesting is that Chrysler chose to utilize the resources they had including bodies from the A-100 compacts to create a medium-duty vehicle for 1966. The one benefit these trucks had was excellent maneuverability; their wheelbase was a short 89 inches allowing for U-turns on streets as narrow as 28ft. For major repairs, the cab tilted up for access to either a Perkins Diesel (optional on L-600) or the 194hp 361-3 V-8 for the L-Series rigs.

Old kits rarely die, they just have the original company purchased and are then reproduced under the new owner's label. J. Lloyd International purchased a number of companies including Glencoe, Polar Lights and Lindberg, each of which had previously bought other companies. One of which was ITC, the original maker of this particuilar kit. ITC kits were superb kits in their day and thanks to the care that Lindberg has shown to cleaning up what has to be near forty-year-old molds, we now are getting the full line of ITC Dodge L series trucks. It started with just the tractor itself, followed by a flat bed with a crushed car and now the tanker version. According to those who know, there is another version with a flat bed on which is a custom car that was part of the series.

Lindberg has molded this kit in white and there are an extensive number of sprues for this one. It also includes a very nicely done chrome sprue, a clear sprue or two with windows and lenses as well as a bag full of well molded vinyl tires. The buyer does have to realize that this kit is from the late 1960s and so you will find ejector pin marks on most of the parts; some in areas that will require their removal or filling during construction. However, I found no flash, no sink areas and no short shot parts so Lindberg has done a great job with this one.

The operating features are all concentrated on the cab. In this case the doors open, the front wheels can be steered and the cab tilts forward to show the 361 V-8. Not surprisingly, the biggest pieces in there are for the tanker portion with this piece being four sections. Most of the parts, however, are for the tractor portion.

The instructions are interesting to say the least. There are three two-sided sheets for the instructions and one for the decals. It is like two different people wrote the instructions; one for the tractor section and another for the trailer. The latter are provided as two of the sheets with one in English and one in French. These are very nicely done with each part listing the piece to which it is to be mated. The cab section is a lot more busy with smaller drawings and no helpful hints as provided with the trailer instructions. All of the color references are generic, which is acceptable. The model is to be painted in the colors for Skelly gasoline, a minor player in the oil business which used to be fairly wide-spread in the US, but all the stations in my part of the country are gone so perhaps they have been swallowed up by one of the bigger corporations. This is the lone option and I think that Lindberg missed out on not providing markings for a US Air Force or US Navy truck as I'm almost sure I've seen these things on flight lines before. The decals are nicely printed and hopefully they are opaque enough to keep the rather intense red from bleeding through the white.  It would have been nice to have at least seen a selection of license plates included with this. I should also mention that the kit supplies a length of clear vinyl hose for the brake line attachments.

I know that many people have been pleased that this kit and other L-700 Dodge offerings are now being made available. Saves from paying the very high collector's prices and really, when you compare what this kit costs to similar kits by AMT or Italeri, it is a real bargain.