I finally finished my police-car-to-taxi conversion. It took me many coats of yellow paint and many wet-sanding steps before I finally got it looking as smooth as I wanted.
Below are some reference pics of screen-used police cars and taxis. The two under glass at Planet Hollywood in Disney Springs (Orlando) were taken by my friend Paul Clark. The more battle-damaged taxi is an image found online. As you can see, the taxis appear to have been converted by several crew members simultaneously, so there are differences in the details such as: the placement of the sign on top, the door handles, the windshield wipers, whether or not the sideview mirrors were painted, etc.
For mine, I went with an amalgam of details gleaned from several pics of the surviving models as well as on-set pics of the toys at the feet of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man costume.
Fabricating the roof sign stymied me for a while. I made a template from cardboard and then made the final one from white styrene. I went through three previous attempts before I got one to curve correctly. The first two snapped, then I decided to try heating it with a hair dryer... resulting in the third one melting.
Even the sides took a few tries. The first ones were accidentally sanded through at their tops while I was shaping it, so they had to be sliced off and re-made.
Despite my need for bifocals and my hands becoming less steady over time, I managed to get the windshield wipers the way I wanted them, though I admit there were a couple of glitches with the acrylic paint that required a quick douse under the faucet and starting over.
I had thought I would just glue the sign to the roof when I was done, but worried it would be prone to snapping off easily. Luckily, I decided during the final reassembly to replace the windshield and bumpers with better ones from two of my other police cars, and while dismantling them I was visibly reminded that the lightbars are held in place by a screw. I fished out the leftover parts from the taxi conversion, and sure enough there was the screw I'd removed from the white beater that had become this very taxi. By sheer dumb luck, the hole I'd already put in the bottom of the sign-- so that I could insert a wooden skewer to spray-paint it-- was the perfect size for the screw to also anchor the sign in place.
The last step was to cadge side-view mirrors from one of the white police cars, and everything was done. I took a few group shots with my blue police cars and some other appropriate vehicles of similar scales.
Alex