Hi,
regarding their racers and road cars it often recedes into the background that Mercedes is the world's oldest and (still?) largest truck manufacturer. Among many of their interesting designs the 1937 L 10000 is outstanding. To my mind it is the most atractive and most impressive Mercedes truck ever made. In 1937 it looked like this (photos by courtesy of Daimler-Benz AG/ Daimler AG):
Unfortunately no original vehicle has survived. Only a O 10000, i. e. a bus, equipped as a rolling post office of the pre-war German Reichspost, is displayed at the fantastic new Mercedes museum in Stuttgart since the museum opening.
Compiling information for a scratchbuild was unsufficient for years, but the Mercedes museum archives were extremely helpful. They sent me lots of photos and photostats with most measurements absolutely free. However all original scale drawings had been lost during WW2, hence a lot of drawing, arithmetics and eyeballing was necessary.
The model is completely scratchbuilt except the rims (modified Revell parts), the headlights and the Mercedes star on top of the radiator. In 2005 I spent more than 1000 hours building it.
This is the result: