Fire Apparatus Model Forums

I started this project, and ran a follow along on Emergency Modeler two years ago. I got stalled, looking for that elusive photo that would show me more details. Over the years, I have collected about every piece of information I could find about the ambulances from the movie. I have all of the still photos and lobby cards, foreign country movie advertising and booklets and brochures, and many stills I have accumulated over the years that you don't see in circulation. I recently acquired a set of movie theater lobby cards, that are much larger than the US cards. The article on Emergency Modeler is pretty thorough, and I did a fair amount of research on the ambulances. I even went so far as to talk at length with Dean Jeffries, the custom car master that built the two movie ambulances. It was my hopes to get to his shop and go through his scrapbook of the builds, and try and get them reproduced by a model manufacturer. Sadly, he passed away before I could follow up at his shop. There is a ton of information out there, and sadly, most of it is wrong or not completely factual. The movie ambulances (yes there were two) were built in his shops, in two weeks. There was a show unit, and a camera unit, but both had camera mounts and alterations to the chassis to support the cameras. The studio sent him two raw Chevrolet G20 vans, and he did it all from basic car lot vans in two weeks. He did tell me, he bought most all the ambulance equipment locally. This could be the reason so many think that they were built by one of the LA area ambulance firms. He told me he made the extended tops, and I go by what he told me. Most of the rest of the stuff is pretty basic. You can see the start and follow along up until today over on Emergency Modeler. I don't want to start over here, so I will pick up where I left off.
http://emergencymodeler.com/forums/inde ... opic=489.0

Here is a shot today, of the raised roof. That is about where I left off when I took a break. Today I spent some time sanding the shape after I made the shell. I reinforced the shell with some .20 plastic, knowing that I could sand through the outside skin. In this photo, it is pretty close. I will fix the plastic to the roof of the van with rubber bands, and start the process of shimming the curvature of the rear. Once that is completed, I will do the final shape sanding of the basic roof structure. Then it will be time to start on the side scene lights.

I will never understand why we have never seen a model of this. Probably the most recognized ambulance in history. Still, 42 years later and not one single model.

Great to see you picking this back up. You are right it is hard to believe not one model of this. I know with your research and attention to detail it will be killer once complete.

The basic raised roof is now done. I have started to sand the bow in the top. That will take a day or so. The angles for the front and rear are close, and the entire assembly sits on the roof pretty well. It is my hopes that the welting will cover the seams, so I don't have to do any filling. At this point, I noticed that the rear roof of the diecast is misshaped. I suspect they ran the grinder too close to the body when cleaning it up. It will take a bit of work to fix it, its right in the right rear corner.