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« on: January 20, 2012, 09:21:17 PM »
i was just reading about the film 'tower heist' and they had a 250 that got tossed out of a office block window, the guy who built the car used a volvo p1800
heres the builder of the show cars blog
Hi everyone, I'm Erich Schultz. I built the two fake Lussos for Tower Heist. The two replicas were built from start to finish in eight and a half weeks. They were in fact made utilizing a Volvo P1800 as the basis of the mold plug. After the bodies were laid in fiberglass, I removed the entire steel outer skin from the Volvo and bonded the new body to the inner windshield frame and the rocker panels of the Volvo. The glass used in the replicas is real. The front and rear windshields are laminated safety glass and the side windows are all tempered.
I did not have access to a real Lusso to make measurements or templates to build the plug. I only had about 25 photos that were downloaded from the internet as reference. I sculpted the plug in two and a half weeks, the seat forms in one day, the dash in 3 days, and the front and rear bumpers in 3 days. I also sculpted the fake rear axle, the engine, the tail lights, license plate lights, door knobs, and trunk latch and molded all of those items. This was necessary as the car needed to weigh just 1500 lbs. in order to be lifted on the cable.
I usually work as a production designer and as a construction coordinator in the film industry.
Cars are just a hobby of mine. I have one Ferrari of my own. I am re bodying it as a Bizzarrini.
I didn't see a real Lusso until the cars were nearly done. I can tell you a real Lusso is a few inches wider at the front wheel arches, and the front end is a couple of inches longer too. The nose and grill mouth on a Lusso are a little lower as well. We had to visually compensate for the flowing grace of the Lusso's profile by lengthening the rear of our Volvo replica. Our tail is longer than the Ferrari's but our front end is shorter by an equivalent amount so the side profile looks close. Overall, our replica is less than a half inch off the real McCoy in length.
When I was making the replica, Mike Regalia, who owns the real McQueen Lusso, came over to Ted Moser's Picture Car Warehouse, where I built the car, and gave me some constructive advice. He pointed out a few spots where I had gotten some proportions wrong so I could correct them.
Side by side with a real Lusso, the replica would not look any where near exact. But like I said, we built two of them from start to finish in 8 1/2 weeks for a movie where camera angles would be a little forgiving.