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The Squire's Offspring

The beautiful 57 Ford Country Squire featured elsewhere in this issue of MCJO prompted a few thoughts about a model I built in the late 70's or early 80's.

Revell realized perhaps more quickly than other model companies that sporty cars departed the hobby shop shelves more quickly than family cars like station wagons. In 1960 Revell whacked around on the 57 Country Squire molds and introduced the 57 Ford Ranchero. The 57 wagon was history. Revell probably made a wise move. The Ranchero mold has been issued again and again and has been hacked and whacked on even more extending its life into recent times. I expect to see this car issued again.

Long ago I found one of these kits unassembled at a swap meet. I am thinking it was kit number 3111. At that time the car was out of production and I was happy to find it.  I build cars stock and this one seemed like a good subject for me, especially since it was molded in light blue which was the right shade for the factory color Starmist Blue. This was a definite plus since we don't want to talk about how many cars I have screwed up with bad paint jobs. Back in those days we didn't know a lot about how to strip bad paint.

This kit did not come fully stock. I can't remember what kind of wheel and tire arrangement it had, but I had my own solution for that one anyway. I had an extra set of AMT 57 Thunderbird wheel covers and tires that I could whitewall.

This car came with a non-standard grill, but I had a solution here also. I had parts and pieces of a 57 Squire wagon with the correct grill. The grill had been painted red in the background and looked junky. If there were chrome replaters then, I was unaware of them. What to do? I painted the grill Testors chrome. Since I like consistency, I also painted all the other chrome parts. It looked a lot like a cheapie PMC car of the late 50's. Actually, it looked somewhat better than that. It went together quite nicely despite some memories of childhood tragedies with AMT/Revell 1:32nd multipiece cars. 

I also sprayed the radiator, valve covers, air breather, master cylinder and heater in Testors chrome. I brush painted the seat accents. I enjoy brush painting and like the textured effect that in my eye looks more cloth-like. The engine is molded in red and I don't have a clue about how that occurred.

This Ranchero model has three significant markers that tell you it was once a 57 Squire. The upside portion of the chassis still has molded-in floor mats for the second seat passengers of the Squire. An area at the rear on both sides just forward of the tailgate has a molded feature that would be found on a wagon model but not on an open pickup model. The most glaring marker is the size of the door. On four-door cars the front doors are a bit shorter than on two-door cars. The Squire was of course a four-door wagon. Rancheros, being two-door vehicles, used the doors from 2-door vehicles. This model has the short door. All I can say is that the squeezed-up door has always bothered me.

If you have a sharp eye, you have now realized that the model just described is not quite what you are seeing in the accompanying picture. Well, if you have a model over a long period of time, you are going to monkey with it.

Some time after this Ranchero was built a reissue came out. It had more or less correct side trim added as well as a correct grill! Unfortunately, the roof was chopped mercilessly. Revell made sure that you could never build this car stock. (Well, I foiled their evil plot, heh, heh.) The important thing for me was that now I had what I needed to have nice shiny chrome parts on this car. I removed all the old chrome parts and installed new ones. The taillights were tipped with a Tamiya translucent red and they appear very realistic.

The only problem now was to find appropriate wheel covers. Once again this was easy. AMT's 57 Ford Fairlane 500 had really nice standard wheel covers. The only way I could get these to work was to use the split Firestone tires of the era without the back inner wheel hub. To achieve the look of a matching wheel rim, I brush painted the inner portion of the tire Starmist Blue and then I finished it off by brush painting the whitewalls.

So there you have it--a simple, clean machine with a complicated past!--CEY