1957 Ford Ranchero camper

Good morning, happy campers! Here is a little fantasy piece for you.

Now where did that come from? Well. once upon a time, just on a whim, I took a photo of a 1:43 1957 Ranchero (by Road Signature) and doodled a camper body on to it.

I scaled the image to model size and took some measurements.

 It then sat in my “Things I Just Can’t Wait To Get Started On” folder for maybe 7 or 8 years. But recently, feeling the urge to sort out some bits of unfinished business, I dug it out.

I should say right away that I am well aware the Ranchero was a “light duty” vehicle and would need an awful lot of reinforcement in the chassis and suspension department to take a body like this, but it wasn’t really meant to be a serious proposal, just an interesting notion. Of course, that doesn’t mean somebody hasn’t tried it . . .

I cut out the camper body section from the drawing and tidied it up a little, stuck it on a piece of brass and cut a template for the body sides, which were then cut from a sheet of ribbed plasticard.

But how to attach a thin roof to those flimsy body sides? Well, I found a sheet of thick (3 mm) perspex and cut strips from it to match the roof profile and glued them to the body sides to support the roof.

At this point, and after such a careful start, forward planning suddenly went out the window, and I started just figuring out each step as I went along. A potentially disastrous approach for any really serious project, but in this case I wasn’t too bothered.

So, what to use for the roof? Aluminium sheet, yes, that’ll do nicely. But how to make those bends? It was a matter of trial and error (or “guile and terror”). Put it in in a vice and bend it with the fingers. Use a small pliers here. A big pliers there. Lay it on a suitable curved surface – like a round file - and hit it with a hammer. It came out OK. Just one or two tiny gaps – oh, microscopic, really - between roof and sides, easily filled.

The rear end is a variety of plastic bits and pieces, the “aluminium” door being finished with matt aluminium BMF.

The glazing was meant to be glued inside the body, but then I wondered if I could make exterior window frames from 1 mm photoetch brass strip. Well, I managed that surprisingly easily, but then those thin frames had to be fitted to the glass, and the glass to the body, without getting stray glue fingerprints everywhere. It was done using a very thin brush to apply a fine bead of canopy glue round the edges, pressing the parts together lightly and hoping for the best. Well, they haven’t fallen off yet.

Additional body detailing was dreamed up on the spur of the moment.  The black box on the forward roof may be a tinted opening window, or it may be some kind of air conditioner, but it started life as a sump guard from a Corgi Vanguards model. The ventilation spinner on the rear roof is a thick aluminium washer with a strip of model railway grille material superglued around it, and an old hubcap on top. The non-slip rear step is a piece of speaker grille from an ancient tape recorder. The pull-out canopy over the rear door is a tight roll of coloured craft paper. Having these ideas pop into your head and finding ways of making them work provides some nice little “Eureka!” moments.

Because of the rather bulky internal “foundations” I had built to support the camper box, there was no room for any attempt at modelling an interior. Just paint the innards dark grey and hope nobody peers through the windows.

Here it is alongside the donor model.

The finished product won’t win any prizes for subtlety of fit and finish, but then it was never meant to. It looks like it was the creation of a backyard mechanic and has seen a bit of hard use.

Bébé s’amuse, as they say in French. The idiot child is having fun.

p.s. Some years ago I modelled a (genuine) Ford Thames 400E camper van conversion. Here are my two campers sitting happily side by side.