$12256 / $11500
Zircon Galaxy is a project created with free resources, OpenGameArt was major resource used for this. It is open source.
Quaternius vehicle models come to mind as one of the most vitial resources, I had a very hard time locating vehicles with a reasonable vertex count that also renderered nicely -- but there were many models and sounds here that proved invaluable.
If interested, a moddb link:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/zircon-galaxy-alpha-10
Video link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPQN9oVhXq4
Shows the use of models in action.