Eric Morris’ Jurassic Park Jeep

I got the idea for building this model from Marc Kimball’s Jurassic Park Vehicles. I did some research to try to find a proper model to start from and discovered that Tamiya made a Jeep Wrangler kit back in 1995 that was the same generation Wrangler as the ones used in the film. As far as I know, the kit is out of production, but I was able to find one from Hobby Link Japan.

The model required some detailing and modification in order to make it match the Jeeps used in the film. The red stripes were masked off and airbrushed, and the decals were made in Microsoft Publisher and printed on Expert’s Choice decal paper using an inkjet printer. The only modification necessary to the Jeep’s body was sanding off of the turn signals from the front fenders. The fog lamps were kitbashed from the tips of a pair of Harpoon missiles. The winch, light bar, door surrounds, soft top mounting hardware, additional tail lights, and radio antenna were built from scratch using rod and strip styrene, hobby wire, and guitar string. To match the light beige metallic body color of the movie Jeeps, I started with Model Master “steel” acrylic and mixed in some light tan to darken it a little.

There are still some inaccuracies with this model, most noticeably the spare tire cover. The ones in the movie did not have a cover, but I didn’t want to go through the trouble of obtaining another kit just to cannibalize it for one wheel. Also, the “18” on the side of the vehicle is supposed to match the body color, and it looked fine on the decal sheet, but when it was placed over the red background the red caused it to look darker.

Eric Morris