Your screen grabs are over-sharpened and generally look very harsh. Also the lighting isn't particularly great, especially on the humvee which looks noisy as hell.
The HUD only counts verts if they're visible and on-screen, thats why I suggested saving as .ma and checking the data to see if anything is actually there, and possibly salvagable.
to mirror an object set the scale to -1 in one of the axis parameters. You can do this by selecting the object and using the text entry boxes down the bottom of the screen.
Yeah, but maybe having the gun and clip closer to the screen would have made the omission less obvious. Or have transparent arms or something. Still, interesting concept!
Here's a quick screen cap of where I am with the texturing. There are a few issues with the wood plank that I need to resolve before I do a final render.
those sketches are not official and looking at your movie screen caps they are inaccurate. you could use them as a base then adjust your model after the real thing.