Can anyone post some photos of Iraqi civilian cars here? This may not be the most appropriate forum but I am currently working on a diorama that has a Humvee stopping a civilian vehicle to do a search. I'm in the process of converting a 1/32 scale snap car into an Iraqi vehicle. It will be appreciated if the photos show the license plates especially.

Try this for plates.

http://www.worldlicenseplates.com/world/AS_IRAQ.html

Prime Portal Iraq pics

Try this and good luck, show us the pics!

First of all, thanks for the photos. Special thanks to Hisham. Those license plates were exactly what I wanted.
You want photos? Yes, photos you will have. Here is my ghetto conversion car. I don't know if you can see it or not but I put the letters, E and W, on the front. The car is named, "Economic Wagen" or in other words, EW~! B/c it's a ghetto mobile.
As you can see, it is far from being finished. I bought this 1/32 scale car- some late 1960's model; name escapes me- from local Hobby Lobby for $5. I cut the chasis in the middle and reduced about 1/2 inch in length. It was a 2-door coupe so I am converting it to a sedan. I gave it scratch-built hood, rear bumper, mufler, parking brake, gear, and door panel. There will be more putty and styrene sheets added. I am trying not to spend too much time on this b/c the main thing on the diorama needs to be the Humvee stopping it. I need to put in two Iraqi drivers before I completely enclose the body however. Anyways, pictures are worth 1000 words- some poses with my Desert Storm tanker figure.

Not bad, looks like it started life as a '68ish (?) Camaro. Another great 1/32 car to use is the Revell/Monogram early-'80s Chevy Malibu that came as a police car or the Fire Chief car in the set with the Firetruck. There were/are lots of Malibus in Iraq. Also, have a look at Arii, a jaanese company that does asian cars. Lots of Toyotas, etc. in Iraq as well. Revell/Monogram had some great small pick-ups that work great as well.

Good luck. Show us more once done.

The militia in Basra seemed to have a lot of the more expensive cars like Mercedes and Lexus, which is why so many got driven over by British Army Warriors when rescuing the two SAS men from them.

Shame :-)

During my time there I remeber seeing an aweful lot of Toyota Corolla's, Nissan's etc. Most were in use as a taxi than a private car. If you were to do a taxi out of your EW, it would fit the bill. Orance front and rear fenders, remaining body parts were white, lots of rust and dents. I know I shot up a whole lot of those cars and they never seemed to run our of them :-) "Q"

Don't forget vehicles you'd see in the US, such as mid 80's suburbans, etc. Many of the license plates still had US tags. Ran into a Suburban with Texas plates still on it, before there was a large crackdown in registering your vehicles.

On a side note, many vehicles come to Iraq through stolen channels, which makes for some interesting mixes of vehicle types.

Jed Sargent

Matt or anybody, is there any other external feature I should be aware of, such as "taxi" sign on the roof or phone number posted on the side of door?

P2G

Nope. If you look in the pic from above, at the one o'clock position off the barrel of the .50 cal, there is a car with orange quarter panels. That is an Iraqi taxi. The orange panels are what is used to ID them.