Hillbilly Hauler

The Clampett Clunker, or, Jed's Jaded Jalopy

My wife Julie had recently rediscovered the old 1960s Beverly Hillbillies TV show and was binge watching episodes for a while. She seemed to thoroughly enjoy this trip down Memory Lane. As I had bought the old 1/25th scale AMT kit of the Clampett’s iconic truck some quarter century ago or so, I thought I’d build it for her as a Christmas gift for 2024. I built it over about a week in late November. The AMT kit is reasonably accurate, with only a few errors so I just built it stock as the errors are not something most people would notice.

The kit’s paint guide was less than stellar and it is incorrectly painted all brownish black on the box cover so I did some research to try and get the look to be a lot more authentic.

The real truck was actually based on a 1921 Oldsmobile sedan similar to these examples:

An original car was found in Fontana California behind a feed store by famous Hollywood vehicle customizer George Barris who lopped off the body behind the front door and replaced it with a wooden flat bed. Further modifications and distressing paint work gave it the heavily used jalopy look. The original car as seen in the show survives very close to its originally modified condition and is on display in the Ralph Foster museum in Missouri, donated by series creator Paul Henning. Replicas and modified versions have been sold over the years. Here is the original as seen today:

Please enjoy the following photos of the finished model I built for Julie. The real fun was in the paint work, as the kit itself was relatively simple to build with only a few minor fitting problems that were easily rectified through careful planning and light trimming of some parts. I used gray primer, medium brown and flat black applied using an airbrush with weathering done with chalks, washes and drybrushing with craft paints. The model was lastly given a flat clear coat coat overall to blend everything together. The underside of the model is pretty simple and not heavily detailed, but is fine since you don’t really see it when sitting on a shelf anyway. I just sprayed it brownish to indicate its constant running over dirt roads.

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