I grew up in Chicago. And I really enjoy building cop cars and other public-service vehicles…especially those with a ‘hometown’ connection. So when I ran across online photos of this striking Franklin Mint ™ diecast, I fell head-over-heels in love:
So I got this…
And I made these…
And another project was underway.
I’d never articulated ‘suicide doors’ before, so I decided I’d do one, just to show off any interior I might add. Luckily the kit’s door moldings were grooved nice and deep, so the scriber took it off quite cleanly.
Kit detail for the famed Ford flathead V8 was excellent. In this case it seemed it would be easier to assemble chassis and engine before any painting, to make sure parts-fit was clean and solid.
Painted her up and added representative wiring and plumbing, and a few data-plates and labels. The kit had only an empty space between where the steering linkage met the chassis and the steering column hit the floorboard of the interior tub, so I repurposed a likely-looking part from ‘spares’ as a steering box and lower steering column.
Interior came basically in shades of grey, with a stock simple (3-gauge) dash. The CPD didn’t get 2-way radios until 1939, but the Department fitted an initial batch of vehicles with receivers as early as 1934. I scratchbuilt the receiver and ‘squawk box’ speaker (“Calling all cars…”), and added 3-dimensional window cranks to the interior. (Door handles to follow.)
That’s it for the time-being. A little more body work…and hinging the cut-apart door…and I should be ready for paint soon.
Thanks for the encouraging words, guys. Just a small update as things chug along.
After several tries…each one managing to get slightly smaller and better-aligned…I’ve gotten the hinges for the ‘suicide door’ on the passenger’s side sorted to the point that they aren’t embarassingly out-of-scale. The hinge ‘leaves’ are cut from brass ‘runners’ from used photo-etch sheets; hinge pins will be tiny lengths of sewing-type straight-pins.
And…being that this was gangland-era Chicago…I worked up a few added ‘extras’ for the interior. The ‘old reliable’ pump shotgun–useful for blasting barrels during raids on bootleggers, as seen in the old newsreels–was left over from a modern-era Welly diecast. The Tommy gun is from AMT’s ‘Gangbusters’ '28 Lincoln set, slightly modified to resemble the military-style weapons obtained in quantity by the Chicago PD from US Army surplus stocks, to put them on a more-even footing with the minions of Al Capone, Bugs Moran, and their associates. Stand-up racks for both were engineered from bit of styrene sheet and strip.
Colors are an original factory option two-tone, Ford ‘Dearborn Blue’ over ‘Body White’…which was actually an off-white or light cream. Actual colors used were Tamiya TS-7 ‘Racing White’ Lacquer for the white, and acrylic X-4 Gloss Blue for the tops and fenders. A factory-scheme trim-stripe of ‘Tacoma Cream’–which will match the wheel hubs–has yet to be added .
Also yet to be painted is the roof panel…which on the original production vehicles was a padded fabric-and-wood-frame insert. (Depending on which source you reference, this was either a pragmatic cost-cutting measure by Ford engineers…or a concession to the practical limits of manufacturing technology of the time, with such a large single-piece roof stamping a seeming impracticality on such a large-production scale.)
Saw The Highwaymen a couple of weeks back so your post popped my interest. And by the way an excellent movie too. Costner did a great job playing Frank Hamer.
I’m not a car modeler but man, that looks super sweet so far. I can just imagine the completed model is gonna look just awesome. Love the added scratch details you did specially the radio.
Thanks for that heads-up: somehow I missed any awareness of that film’s existence, but it sounds great! (And timely, given the subject matter.) I’ll have to check that out.
BTW, I forgot to mention my initial post, re my title, but popular legend has it that the familiar and iconic ‘Calling All Cars’ squawk in fact originated with the Chicago PD…ironically, not when they got special receivers fitted in their patrol cars, but during an earlier experimental program when police alerts were broadcast as needed over a local commercial radio station. That program was such a success that it spurred the department to acquire and install the then-brand-new ‘specialized’ police receivers, and then the 2-way sets a few years later.
The bad guys loved the Ford flathead V-8 for things like moonshine running, driveby shootings and bombings, get-away cars from bank robbery, etc. The model looks fantastic, but it needs “Mars” lights to be a true Chicago cop car. You are from Chicago so you’ll “get” that!!! Great job. You may be able to outrun the car, but you can’t outrun the radio!
I do, indeed: I even home-made my own 1/25 Mars logo decals for a scratchbuilt ‘Skybolt’ light bar, when I did my Blues Brothers-era CPD Dodge Monaco some years ago.
Unfortunately, Jerry Kennelly was still working the bugs out of his ‘baby’ when the Ford Model 18s took to the streets in the early '30s. Haven’t been able to find hard info as to who the manufacturer for the ‘plain’ globe-lights was…but it would be a few more years before those awesome Mars lights graced patrol cars, fire trucks…and C&NW locomotives.
Many thanks for your reply, and I appreciate the good thoughts![B]
Entering the ‘home stretch’ for my '30s police ride with those ever-necessary law-enforcement accessories…lights and sirens.
I have accumulated a few modern 1/25 police-car lightbars in my 'spares ’ box…but nothing to match the single ‘globe’ lamp–at that stage, not even a rotating one–mounted on patrol cars of the period. Rather than shelling out close to ten bucks for somebody’s rough resin copy, I turned to one of my favorite sources for scratchbuilding ‘gizmos’: cheap giveaway ball-point pens of the type that banks, doctors offices and insurance agents have been handing out for decades. I’ve got one of those 2-gallon zip-lock bags nearly full of them; the pen part itself is usually useless…short-lived if you can even get it to write at all…but the ‘clicker’ mechanisms come in such a wonderful variety of shapes and sizes that they’re useful for all sorts of stuff. Over the years, I’ve used them to scratchbuild missile bodies, naval y-guns, all sorts of weapons mounts and exhaust thingies…and police-car lights.
The Chicago PD cars of this period were famous for the ‘warbling’ sound of their dual sirens. No specific information that I could find as to the actual hardware–but lots of period photos of different sirens on the web–so I went with what was handy. AMT’s '34 Ford kit is one of those ‘2-in-1’ kits that gives you optional parts for modding a custom or street rod as well as the ‘stock’ version…in this case, including higher-performance dual carburetors which–if you look at them long enough–might make good sirens.
That’s it for the present. She’s actually nearly done at this point…just a few kit-omitted ‘extras’ to add…so the next post should be of the completed vehicle.
Notorious gangster John Dillinger has ‘miraculously’ escaped from the Crown Point, Indiana jail…only 50 miles to the south. ‘Smart money’ has him heading to his old stomping-grounds of the Windy City for what could be a long, hot summer.
“Calling all cars…Calling all cars…Be on the lookout…”
Congratulations! It’s lookin’ good! I say if I had a choice between your model and the Franklin Mint, I’d choose your model, say, to display in my dining room! And I see it didn’t take you very long to build it, neither - not to speak of all the fun we all would miss if you went to buy an assembled model. Thanks for sharing and have a nice day!
As to the speed of the build, it went quickly because nothing much went wrong! It’s a great kit, with no real lurking problem areas that a little test-fitting didn’t take care of.
