But there was no such thing, right? Well, there surely could have been. I got one of "those ideas" the other day, staring at the stack if kits I came out of a raffle with. I was staring at the Trumpeter Type 87 SPAAG, even peeked in the box and thought "nice kit, no interest", this one:
IMG_2503 by Russel Baer, on Flickr
until I glanced at a pic of the Marksman turret on something, and realized whoever makes that thing (Vickers) pimped it to everybody and their uncle, and of course I thought, why not on a Merkava hull? Well, I just happen to have a couple of the old Tamiya Merk 1 kits and pieces of the Academy Merk 2 kit, so after a couple of hours I had a lower hull together. I also have a set of Friuls from a really old build that looked good on it. The solution for the "problem" of mounting the Type 87 turret on the Merk hull was actually easy: I took a spare Merk 1 turret lower half and after tracing the smaller hole for the Type 87 turret, cut it out. Two grooves filed into it for the locking tabs and I had that part done. I then trimmed the turret base to just outboard of the turret ring, flipped it over and inserted into the Merk upper hull and glued it in. That gave the the slight rise I needed and with some weld beads and bolt heads will actually look "real".
Just sitting there:
IMG_2502 by Russel Baer, on Flickr
I know what-ifs are not everyones cup of tea, but I get a real kick out of doing something that would have actually worked and makes people scratch their heads too.