Dave Hill's Phantom Passenger Car Pickup Collection...30 Years Later

[tim boyd]

Dave Hill is among the most talented model car builders and automotive designers I have run across during my decades in this hobby. In the mid to late 1980's, Dave designed and built a series of 1/24th and 1/25th scale street rods and customs that built on an idea from another highly talented automotive designer (and in more recent times, author), Thom Taylor.

Thom's idea was to apply the styling of the 1934 Ford passenger vehicle line to a roadster pickup body style, which of course was in high-contrast to the original 1934 Ford factory pickups of that year, which used what was essentially the prior generation 1932 Ford passenger car styling. Dave took that idea and applied it in (miniature) to a variety of model kits from AMT and Monogram. The result you see here.

I showcased Dave's 1948 Ford Phantom Pickup in my then-monthly "Modeler's Corner" column in Street Rodder magazine. Dave's design subsequently took the form of a real 1/1 scale Street Rod built by Gary Vahling of Masterpiece Rodding in Colorado, unveiled in finished form in 1989.

In more recent years, Dave has taken commissions for hot rod era automotive design and authored many articles in magazines such as Custom Rodder and various titles of the Buckaroo Publishing Empire.

Individual images each of Dave's 1934, 1936, 1940, and 1948 Ford Phantom Passenger Car Pickups are shown here, as well as his 1949 Mercury Phantom Pickup. I photographed Dave's five phantom pickups on the railing of the deck at my home near Atlanta on a fall day in late 1988. I just rediscovered these slides during a major reorganization of my home office and model studio, and I thought you would enjoy seeing them now.

Thanks for looking....TIM 

Edited October 29, 2018 by tim boyd

[Metalmad]

Very cool collection !

[Koellefornia Kid]

Nice collection! I especially like the ´36 Ford and the ´49 Merc. 

[Earl Marischal]

Very imaginative and well built.

I'd love a 1:1 of the blue '48!

steve

[Spex84]

Excellent stuff! Those are very cleanly executed models. I think my faves are the yellow and white RPUs.

The 80s era isn't my favorite in terms of colors, graphics, and wheels, but when it all comes together the results are impressive. I had a bagful of those centerline-style wheels that I considered junk, but recently I was admiring photos of Lil John's '32 3-window (with the rectangular headlights) thinking that someday, I should build a genuine 80s-mid 90s street rod with all the bells and whistles....and finally put those wheels to good use! I'd like to have some hot rods from every major period, '40s through 2010s, on the shelf eventually.

[Dave Darby]

Ah yes, I remember those well. Thanks for the trip in the Wayback Machine Tim!

[Phildaupho]

Thanks for posting these Tim. I really enjoyed looking!!

[cobraman]

Those are all very sharp.

[espo]

I remember seeing a couple of those in the past. They are all great concepts and well done.  

[Dennis Lacy]

Thanks so much for posting these, Tim. I remember these well and it's good to see them again. You featured them all in a builders profile in a 1990 Street Rodder that also showed Dave's roadster cab-over big rig and transporter trailer. That issue had a bunch of extra model car coverage.

That's my all time favorite issue because it contains my all time favorite Modeler's Corner where you showed start to finish how to build a street rod '29 Pickup using the best of what was available at that time. That little truck turned out so killer. I built my own version in the mid 90's as a teen but it didn't survive. I read that issue so many times it fell apart. I bought a replacement issue on eBay years ago and doing another '29 Pickup following the article is on my to do list. 

Edited October 30, 2018 by Dennis Lacy

[tim boyd]

4 hours ago, Dennis Lacy said:

Thanks so much for posting these, Tim. I remember these well and it's good to see them again. You featured them all in a builders profile in a 1990 Street Rodder that also showed Dave's roadster cab-over big rig and transporter trailer. That issue had a bunch of extra model car coverage.

That's my all time favorite issue because it contains my all time favorite Modeler's Corner where you showed start to finish how to build a street rod '29 Pickup using the best of what was available at that time. That little truck turned out so killer. I built my own version in the mid 90's as a teen but it didn't survive. I read that issue so many times it fell apart. I bought a replacement issue on eBay years ago and doing another '29 Pickup following the article is on my to do list. 

Dennis...thanks for the comments and the inspiration....pretty cool to know that the article inspired you back then. 

That Street Rodder was a really interesting issue.....nearly 40 pages (IIRC) on model cars and other scale replicas.  I remember telling Editor Tom Vogele that I thought he would get a lot of negative pushback from regular Street Rodder readers over devoting that much space to our favorite topics, but he went ahead anyway, and I don't recall him ever telling me later that this occurred.  He also never said the following (that I recall) about the issue, but I always thought it was a flier to see if a model-based magazine would be a good addition to the then-growing McMullen Yee Publishing Empire.  

I've been recently in the process of going through my model collection and photographing like-typed (e.g., five window coupe) and posting them together on my Fotki site.  I'll try to make sure I include that pink closed cab pickup sooner than later.  

Best..TIM       

[DumpyDan]

Impressive models, I remember most of the from the pages of a magazine.  really nice collection, thanks for posting.

[Vince Nemanic]

Sadly, Dave's house was destroyed in the 1989 Loma Prieta (San Francisco) earthquake. I herd that he lost everything, so it is possible tht these models no longer exist. 

[Dennis Lacy]

8 minutes ago, Vince Nemanic said:

Sadly, Dave's house was destroyed in the 1989 Loma Prieta (San Francisco) earthquake. I herd that he lost everything, so it is possible tht these models no longer exist. 

Actually, the May 1990 Street Rodder issue I referenced above states that these roadster pickups shared by Tim (including the big rig I mentioned) were among the very few survivors of Dave's finished models. 

[Dennis Lacy]

On 10/30/2018 at 4:22 AM, tim boyd said:

Dennis...thanks for the comments and the inspiration....pretty cool to know that the article inspired you back then. 

That Street Rodder was a really interesting issue.....nearly 40 pages (IIRC) on model cars and other scale replicas.  I remember telling Editor Tom Vogele that I thought he would get a lot of negative pushback from regular Street Rodder readers over devoting that much space to our favorite topics, but he went ahead anyway, and I don't recall him ever telling me later that this occurred.  He also never said the following (that I recall) about the issue, but I always thought it was a flier to see if a model-based magazine would be a good addition to the then-growing McMullen Yee Publishing Empire.  

I've been recently in the process of going through my model collection and photographing like-typed (e.g., five window coupe) and posting them together on my Fotki site.  I'll try to make sure I include that pink closed cab pickup sooner than later.  

Best..TIM       

Not to get all gushy but You and Modeler's Corner are pretty much responsible for my interest in scale hot rod building and showing me that I could modify kits to make them my own.

I would love to see that little pink truck again with better, modern photography! 

I'm not surprised that you didn't hear negative feedback on that issue. Probably most of the reader base built models in their youth and quite a few of them still did or else your column wouldn't have gone on for as long as you were able to do it.

[Speedfreak]

Very nice.

[om617]

Nice collection!