13/10/2025
“Surf Hearse”
Photos and Text By: Neil Vanzile
Featured in issue No. 4 of Model Car Builder
(https://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/188415?__r=19048)
1. About Me
My name is Neil, and I am a model
car geek. I was a very active geek for many years.
Then life threw me some changes, and went on the
model building “wagon” for about ten years. But my
wife bought me a copy of Diggers, Funnies, Gas-
sers & Altereds: Drag Racing’s Golden Era by Bob
McClurg for Christmas in 2009 and I slipped right
back into my old model car geek ways.
2. Inspiration
I had always wanted to build a
model of a surfer’s wagon, but I didn’t have a kit in
stock that fit what I wanted. I always like the “Mod
8 Model Car Builder
Squad” Mercury Woodie, but that kit has gotten too
expensive for me. Since I was getting back into the
hobby after nearly ten years, I began looking at all
the new resin kits that have become available since
I stopped building. One of the resin companies that
I found was Race Motor Replicas (http://rmrresin.
webs.com). They had a neat looking kit of a 1932
Ford Hearse/Ambulance that was designed to fit
the AMT Ford Victoria kit. The RMR kit comes with
a body, fenders, interior bucket, chassis and a seat.
It looked like a perfect candidate for a Surf Wagon
to me.
I found an interesting article about the
use of hearses as surfer’s transportation, written
by Mike Doyle on the Legendary Surfers website (http://
files.legendarysurfers.com/surf/legends/lsc220_doyle.
html ). It the article Doyle
talks about buying old hearses for a number of
reasons; they were cheap because no one wanted
to buy a used hearse; they were relatively new and
had low miles; they had big motors; they had lots
of room to carry boards and all the other gear; and
you could sleep in them if needed.
I wanted to share this build on the
Traditional Rod and Kustoms In Scale online forum
(http://trakinscale.proboards.com), and the TRaK In
Scale board has a 1969 cutoff for body styles and
parts. My idea was to build this as it might have
appeared circa-1963. I planned to use the Revell
32 Ford, so some changes would have to be made
to make the model fit within the TRaK guidelines.
First, while I could live with the disc brakes on the
Revell kit, I would have to get rid of the rear airbag
suspension, and I would have to come up a more
appropriate engine than the late-model Ford in the
kit.
I worked for a number of years as a
Cadillac mechanic. During that time we always had
at least one hearse in the shop, so, for me, there
was really one choice for the engine - a Cadillac. I
had a Revell Parts Pak Cadillac “354” engine and
that was the obvious choice as the powerplant for
this hearse.
For the rear suspension I used a pair
of parts box parralel leaf springs, which meant
making some minor modifications to the chassis.
With a car this long, there was plenty of room for
leaf springs.I only used the body from the RMR kit
and combined that with parts from the Revell 32
Ford kit. I had to stretch the fenders and chassis,
but it allowed me to use the better detailed parts
from the Revell kit. I also built my own interior us-
ing the Revell interior and some Evergreen plastic
sheet.
I scratchbuilt the roof racks using
sheet brass, Evergreen plastic a couple of wooden
coffee stirrers. The tie-down cords are braided cop-
per solder wick, available in a number of sizes from
McMaster-Carr (http://www.mcmaster.com). If you
have never checked out McMaster-Carr, then you
need to right now. They carry nearly half a million
items including tools, parts and an incredible num-
bers of things that can be used for scratchbuilding.
3. Longboards
From the start, I knew that I wanted
a pair of old style longboards to put on the top of
this rod. My inspiration for the two boards were
the early longboards shaped by the first man to
surf the Banzai Pipeline, Greg Noll. Noll’s early
boards were made of balsa with a redwood string
in the middle for strength. I used a combination of
basswood and mahogany and sealed them with
nitrocellulose lacquer. The boards are not replicas
of actual boards but are styled after photos of early
Noll longboards I found on the ‘net.
4. Finished
I made a few things to go into the all
that space in the back - a bed roll for those long
overnight surf treks; a folding beach chair, a con-
tainer of Esso Surf Wax, and a wooden fruit to hold
loose junk. The Goleta Lemon label on the crate is
to commemorate the first official drag race, held in
Goleta, California in April 1949.
Building this model was a re-learn-
ing experience for me. After ten years I really had
forgotten how to build a model. But a lot of the fun
was in spending time looking back through my col-
lection of old model magazines and learning about
the early days of surfing.
Editor's Note: Neil has passed away, but I wanted to share his
creation with you. We miss you buddy!
