I need to make a prop display that is a full-scale VW bus. It’s the kind hippies and surfers use. It will have slightly cartoonish and exaggerated features. It will have 50% detail of the real thing, meaning we can take liberty with the level of accuracy on the windows, doors, and wheels to make it easier, cheap and quicker. It just needs to be recognizable and it needs to be a plastic or fiberglass shell. I need to manufacture it as cheap as possible, super light and take paint and vinyl graphics. I have a 3D model of it already in CAD. It can be several pieces like 1/4 panels.
I originally was thinking of a plastic body like a power wheel or kids’ car, but those are rotational blow molds that are hella expensive. I need just one for a display.
Any ideas from those beautiful minds at DMS?
I would look into how parade floats are made - Welded frame with chicken wire stretched over and then coated in a spray plastic.
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Parade-Float.html
or Carving Foam blocks:
I assume this falls outside of “as cheap as possible”, but might be good starting point if not
https://www.macomberfiberglassbodies.com/products/vw-bus
(Note dimensions, vs, e.g. 1979 transporter dimensions: characteristic dimensions: outside length: 4570 mm / 179.9 in, width: 1845 mm / 72.6 in, wheelbase: 2460 mm / 96.9 in from here)
Quite honestly, this is probably the best option since making anything yourself will run in the hundreds for a project of this scale. It might be more expensive up front but the longevity and stability factor would sell it as an option for me.
Maybe not as detailed as you are looking for, but hand cut coroplast and 2x4 on a 16 foot trailer, done by a friend. Just to give ideas of one way it could be done.
if it is just for display purposes only, you could proably get good results with papermache and paperclay
I’m not a hippy or a surfer …but I sold my 61 VW transporter a few years ago and now it resides in the U.K. but I do have a cool truck that looks like the “bus” you are looking for other than the cargo bed…
Oh my, that is sweet. Looks like a better shape one that Mustie1 on YouTube has.
You have the coolest vehicles…
J.J,
I’ve never wanted be caught in “what everybody else has” types of cars…my other air cooled car is a "newer than than the Doka in the pic above, it is a 74 Thing. (Let’s see a showing of hands of how many folks here know what one of those are without using Google)
Claude, Cairenn’s hubby, used to own one of those.
Reese witherspoons vehicle in one of her early roles in “Overnight Delivery” with Paul Rudd.
Judy,
speaking of movies with VW Things in them:
The “Thing” in “Overnight Delivery” is a 1974 model.
The “Thing” in “50 First Dates” is a 1973 model.
IMCDb confirms this
and if you’re wondering whereallelse you can see a type 181 in action, they have a whole list:
https://www.imcdb.org/vehicles_make-Volkswagen_model-Typ+181.html