The Addams Family Limo

       

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Original Kit:
Packard Speedster Phaeton
Made By:
Monogram (kit #2300)
Scale:
1/24
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The Addams Family Packard
Munster Packard horn Munster Packard hood ornament Munster Packard engine Munster Packard dashboard Munster Packard steering wheel Munster Packard rear

 
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Compared to the more famous Munster's Koach, the Addams Family limo was a difficult car to pin down. It appeared in fewer than a half dozen episodes, and really only one of those could count as more than a cameo. The only color photos I've seen of it came from Viewmasters, which mostly confirmed what I already thought I knew (more on that in a minute). About all that could be considered absolute was that it was a Packard Phaeton with a long wheelbase and eight cylinder engine. Monogram's kit hit three of these four, which put it ahead of some official releases.

The engine was built straight out of the box, painted Tamiya TS-88 Titanium Silver for the crankcase and Citadel's Castellan Green for the block, head, and details. I continued following the instructions right through the chassis, which went together surprisingly well considering the age of the tooling and number of parts involved. The first diversion I made was when it was time to assemble the wheels: the TV car had steel wheels and blackwall tires, neither of which came in the kit. I was also missing one of the whitewall inserts, which I addressed by carving a rough equivalent of the inserts onto 0.060" styrene. The inserts were all painted black, then the tires were flipped inside out and I put my custom insert on the rear axle. Thanks to everything being black and the generally closed shape of the rear fenders, any discrepancies between my insert and the kit-supplied parts all but vanished. The wheels were a set of custom parts I drew up and had 3D printed.

When it was time to do the interior, I studied the episodes where the car appeared to try to figure out the color. Everything appeared lighter than black, but nowhere near light enough to be tan or gray. My best guess was either maroon or blue, both of which looked like they would translate to the gray we saw on screen. Maroon seemed most fitting, given the wacky-but-wealthy family. But remember when I said "thought I knew"? Only after assembly did I find the aforementioned Viewmaster slide, which showed a tiny sliver of the top of the front seat...in black. Oops. Either the interior had faded a lot more than I thought or the studio lights were bright enough to blow out the old leather on film. Either way, I decided to take the "L" and keep it maroon. I did add Thing's box on the front seat, and the custom cue ball shift lever, both of which appeared on screen.

For the body, I started by cleaning up the edges, deepening the panel grooves, and assembling the fenders to the body. There were some gaps around the rear fender, so I put a healthy bead of Aleen's Tacky Glue inside the body along the seam. It works as both an adhesive and a gap filler, so hey - bonus. The hood vents were stripped of their chrome using Purple Power. Once the prep work was done, everything was painted TS-14 Black and lightly polished. The running boards were painted Apple Barrel Matte Black with BMF Matte Aluminum edges, other details and the chrome parts were touched up with paint and regular BMF.

Finally, it was time to add the final details. The license plates were my usual custom prints, laminated to aluminum repair tape to give them a metallic appearance and glued to the brackets with more Tacky Glue. The vulture hood ornament was another 3D printed part, painted using an EX Plated Silver Gundam Marker. It was my first time using this instead of my usual Molotow Liquid Chrome, and the results are just as good if not better. The kit-supplied windshield was badly warped out of the box, so I made a new pane out of clear plastic sheet. The frame was modified to remove the mirror, and a pair of spotlights from AMT's Freightliner were added. The loop door handles were made by reshaping some photoetched parts and plugging them into the stock ports. Finally, the horn on the driver's door was modified from a Hallmark "Festive French Horn" 2020 Keepsake Ornament.

 

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