Cars Sarge

       

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Original Kit:
Shake 'N Go Sarge
Made By:
Fisher-Price
Scale:
N/A
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Sarge from the Pixar movie Cars
Sarge side detail Sarge hood detail Sarge rear

 
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Considering how the Cars franchise has been a major revenue stream for Pixar for the better part of two decades, it's still surprisingly difficult to find 1/24 scale options to add to the collection. It's led to some...unique...sourcing. Case in point: the Shake 'N Go Sarge toy from the World of Cars series. Thanks to Sarge's original character model being shorter than the average Radiator Springs resident, his toy was far less chibified than the others in the line. I found one on eBay for cheap thanks to a corroded battery compartment and some worn stickers, but everything I needed was there.

The wheels were easily the weakest part of the figure, with chunky plastic tires in three different sizes. I started drawing up some 3D wheels and tires to try to correct this, before I realized that I was trying too hard to be "scale accurate." The wheels tend to run large on the existing Cars diecasts, and after some quick math I confirmed that a 1/18 scale MB should be able to provide what I needed. As a bonus, I thought I might be able to use some of the chassis to recreate that iconic Willys MB design. It turned out that the width was pretty good and the wheels were dead-on, but I needed to take out nearly two inches from between the axles. One afternoon of sawing and epoxy later, and I had a passable chassis that fit the Shake 'N Go body.

This was all well and good, but the toy's chassis also provided the floor and inner fenders for the body. I had to scratchbuild these from sheet styrene, carefully installing them after the body was mounted on the chassis so I could be sure of an exact fit. I also needed to modify the bumpers: the front was too static given Sarge's expression, and the rear stuck out too far. I cut both off, replacing the front with a reshaped piece of channel styrene, and gluing the rear back in place after I had removed some material. The spare tire was also taken from the diecast, but I kept the gas can from the original toy. To fix the speaker slots in the roof, I simply applied strips of gaffer's tape over the roof with the seams placed right at the edges to make them disappear as much as possible.

Physical modifications done, it was time for paint. I masked off the windows, sprayed everything with Krylon's Ultra Flat Camouflage Olive, then masked off the roof to keep it totally matte while the rest of the body was given a light mist of semigloss clear. This provided a good visual distinction between the "canvas" and "metal" areas, plus it gave me a better base to apply the decals. These were all custom prints I made, and include the headlights, hood, eyes, and stars. Paint was used for the mouth, grille slats, parking lights, and rear lights. The final detail was a custom "41WW2" license plate, drawn up in Illustrator.

 

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