maxwell48098

When I was a Chrysler Corp service rep back in the 1970's, I had one of the very first Lil Red Express trucks produced as my company vehicle. It received some minor body damage in transit and got diverted to company car service are the roof dent was repaired. The engine in the one I drove actually had black valve covers as it was a police package A-68 engine. Talk about a quick truck! I drove it 1,000 miles then sold it to a dealer for resale as a "used" vehicle. The dealer principal loved the LRE so much, he used it as his demo for almost a year. Here's my build that was done way back in 1979.

In addition to the obvious cab offset, DM series (produced from 1966 - 1988) chassis were much heavier duty than the standard R series (produced from 1965 - 1990) . Mack also offered the RD and RM (1971 - 1990) series which basically the heavy duty DM chassis with the R-series cab.

I only bought from him when he was a toy shows WITH product. He'd sometimes bring one of his masters and try and get folks to buy them in advance. Two guys I know, did that and never got their conversions despite paying him at the shows. A.J.

Great build. A.J.

Outstanding!!!!! A.J.

Outstanding guy and business to deal with. Definitely "2 thumbs up", and the products are all first rate. A.J.

One thing not to overlook is that the sedan roofs were usually about 2 inches higher than hardtop roofs. Look at Joe's images above and you can see the difference. A.J.

In my final year of college in 1973, my thesis was on emergency vehicle color. I spent nearly 7 months gathering several thousand pages of information and notes in researching the area, conducting over 100 interviews with everyone from ordinary people on the street, to first responders, to emergency and normal vehicle manufacturers, to paint manufacturers, to opticians, to color and lighting professionals. Except for traditionalists, the light, not quite florescent green (under mainly by the Ward LaFrance fire equipment mfr. at the time) was proven to be the best, most visible color under all lighting conditions, while lighter yellows were also a good choice. Of course at the opposite end of the scale was black, and traditional medium and dark reds were in the bottom quartile. It was amazing to see the differences in visibility under different lighting conditions. But in the end, tradition seemed to be the driving factor in emergency vehicle color. Ford example, Chicago's black over red color scheme goes back to the late 1800's when the chief's rode in buggies to fire scenes. The buggies themselves were painted red while their canvas roofs were black, and thus began a tradition. Fortunately, emergency lighting has come a long ways to make up for any loss of visibility under anything but bright sun light. I wish I still had a copy of my thesis today as it would be interesting to see where we've gone since then.

Great execution of weathering and detail.

The current Mt Horeb WI fire apparatus are painted black. Here's a couple of them:

Here's a 1975 Ramcharger I made out of a '75 D100 pickup.

Here's one I built that was based on the 1:1 company car I had.

Holy Cow!!!! A.J.

Here are a couple of Blazers, Jimmys, and a Ramcharger that I built over the years. The biggest thing lacking from the Blazers and Jimmy's is the outside rear view mirrors.

Each paint chip sample has a number on it in the lower right corner which they then cross-reference to the brand and type of paint the customer wants on the apparatus. In person, you can see the very, very slight differences between them. There really are 42 different whites that they offer. Having been to both the DuPont and PPG color studios while I was working for Chrysler, I can tell you that there are literally 150 - 200 different shades of white, and nearly the same number of blacks. So life really isn't as simple as black and white.

Wow. Nicely crafted. A.J.

Really nice looking. A.J.

Here's the standard paint samples that Pierce offers their apparatus in. Look at the different shades of red, white, yellow, green. Almost any shade you choose would be correct.

Use the chassis and stock parts from one of the many AMT '32 Ford kits and you can build a stock version. A.J.

Of course you can also take the coupe kit and the touring car street rod and combine them into a stock touring car like this:

I used several of these kits as the basis for other models by lengthening the frame and adding resin wheels/tires. I did a min-pumper, a light rescue, and a wrecker. The only one I could find images of was the mini-pumper.

It is ironic that the number 1 selling vehicle in the US (for several decades) is the Ford F150 pickup, yet the model companies look the other way when it comes to modern light trucks and Sport Utilities.

I guess this new version explains the aftermarket dual exhaust and not the single muffler system that the original stock versions used.

Hopefully they will offer both the long and short wheel base / pickup box versions. Actually, it is pretty easy to make a 6' box version from and 8' box version, but much harder and more expensive (2 kits required) to make an 8' version from 6' version. A.J.

Here is a rescue that I built from a couple of R&R panel trucks Used the second one to length the body to be a 3/4 ton C20.