Is this a stock 1949 Police Car Kit?

First, it's more like a 49 1/2. The side chrome strip is from a '50 Merc. The grille is a '49. Second, I doubt that police cars back then had quite that elaborate a light bar. A solitary Gumball Machine was the usual equipment. The body has rear fender skirts moulded on the body. And the lakes pipes mark it as street rod. One can order a '50 merc grille and dash from Modelhaus in Illinois to help you reach a more stock appearance. I have with mine but I'm still puzzling over what to do with the rear skirts. Since I'm shooting for a semi-Street Stock coupe the skirts aren't a big issue. For an honest cop car you almost have to remove them. The interior is a bit cheap and the wheel/tire combo are almost toyish. Getting an 'AMT' '49 Merc kit for parts is a good idea. HTH.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Like Bill said, that's more of a custom lead sled than a true depiction of a cop car. For starters, cop cars are going to be 4 door sedans. Wanna take a guess at the least kitted and hardest to find body style by all makes and manufacturers? Yep - 4 door sedans.

If they simply had offered up some 4 door sedans instead of the preferred 2 door coupe sport model kits, it would be a fairly simple process to model vintage cop cars from an ordinary street car kit. You'd start with a 4 door door sedan model and strip it down to a base model sporting little or no chrome, plain rims and a plain bench seat interior. Toss on the right paint job and add a little police brick a brack (gumball light, windshield post spotlight, whip antenna, etc) and you'd have a model police car that would look right as rain with little extra effort.

It's an old saw of mine on how the manufacturers obssess on kitting 2 door sport models to the exclusion of just about all else. I would have loved to have built a collection of vintage police cars - especially a fleet of Mayberry Fords.

As for dedicated cop car kits, I imagine there's a few out there. I couldn't really say, I stopped looking for them a long time ago.

WmB

on 7/23/2009 6:06 AM (ET) WmB wrote the following:

Not to mention the car number. "Car 54, Where Are You"?

Another point, the "Police" on the hood that is reversed. I don't that started happening until the 1970s or maybe even later. This model is as much a police car as the old Aurora (?) Garbage Truck or the S'cool Bus were stock vehicles.

found a place for die cast cars, think that will be the way to go...

Craig

There are resin bodies available for some of these and I think I saw a '61 Plymouth among those. Drat! I just got a new Modelhaus catalogue but I can't find it at the moment. I believe they have a '65 Ford Custom 300 sedan body to fit the 'AMT' hardtop kit and possibly they have an '80s Chevrolet Impala sedan in the catalogue yet. Revell did offer the '90s jelly bean Chevy as a fire chief's car and Lindberg did the '90s Crown Victorias in both fire and police versions. JoHan altered their '68 Plymouth Fury into a sedan after '68 just for police use. NYPD was one of the choices.

The thing is that most of these model car companies started out selling promotionals to the Big Three and they built whatever versions the auto companies wanted. It seems the model kit business was just an afterthought, profitable though it was. Ahh, the good old days when every boy on the block, and some girls, were building model cars! We were always trading parts and projects around. I assume that's why I still have parts for cars that I never owned.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

I wouldn't bet against the popularity of "Adam-12" having something to do with that.

WmB