As a side-bar to my 1/25 Cooter's garage model, I put together this little display for the 1/64 DOH diecast cars. Its all a cardstock model with the exception of the landscaping. Still a work in progress- I'll continue to add some details and tweak things.

-Mark

more...

last ones...

Brilliant job!! I've always wanted to try something like that but I could never follow through on it.

Ha! I know what you mean about the 'follow through'- I've been wanted to do this since visiting Cooter's Place in Gatlinburg in the mid 90s.

M

Nice job Mark. You've got a lot of detail in there considering the size. I don't think I have enough room to build one to go with my 1:18 collection .

Nonsense- keep it outside!

Mark

Wow! What a fantastic job!

I was watching 'Welcome Back, Bo 'n' Luke' earlier when I realized that Boss Hogg beat you to making a scale model of Cooter's. Judging by this close-up, it's not terribly accurate. The overall shape is right but there's an extra window on the office next to a very narrow door, and the center window has shrunk and acquired shutters. Additionally, there's small writing on many of the walls. It looks like it says "Lacey Squires Proprietor" above the "Service" sign, but the rest is unreadable.

This section of the model gets replaced by Boss's colorful fast food outlets. The only other building we get to see in detail is the police station/county building when Boss rests on it to sign a check at the end of the episode.

That is amazing! Needless to say, I haven't come across this ep yet. This is very exciting to me- what you have there is what we call a 'white model'. It involves taking the blueprint drawings (in this case, xeroxed copies) and gluing them to a more solid medium like foam core, heavy cardstock, or matteboard and cutting out the parts to build the model. Therefore, what you are seeing is essentially a 3-d blueprint.

I can say with nearly 100% assurance that you are looking at studio drawings of that backlot building. This was likely the most up to date drawing they had on this building at the time- the differences you are seeing reflect an earlier incarnation of the building; possibly even the version when it was first built; either that, or the last major alteration (probably for a larger budget feature and not a tv show). Backlot buildings get altered for different productions and many times the blueprints on file don't get updated for years- sometimes decades at a time. The wierd differences in the office are the strangest part- almost like they put the wrong drawings on that wall.

Great!!

Mark

Ha! Guess what I found??

Character name Jacey Squires from 'The Music Man'.

Take a look at this pic:

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3634923264/tt0056262

Mark

And then there's this:

A musical number in front of Cooters!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbhnRuJBHLs

And one inside!!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PujvRmxvtao

M

Ha! Guess what I found??

Character name Jacey Squires from 'The Music Man'.

A musical number in front of Cooters!!!

And one inside!!

Nice videos Mark, I missed these when I posted '76 Trombones' from 'The Music Man' in the Hazzard Square thread the other week. The place looks so different, and there's an extra partition wall in the back right corner of Cooter's/Squires'. The design of the Rhuebottom's building is pretty much as it appeared in 'The Shootist" - the store front must have been added in the late '70s, which explains why it looks so clean in 'Luke's Love Story'.

That is amazing! Needless to say, I haven't come across this ep yet ...

The weird differences in the office are the strangest part- almost like they put the wrong drawings on that wall.

I think I figured out what they did with the office. They took the plan for three sides (including the door and window on the unseen side that's visible in 'The Shootist') and wrapped them around two sides of the model.

Seeing as you haven't got this far yet, here's a few more pictures of the models. I'd say they're not far off your 1:64 model above. Cooter's is the model nearest to Boss.

I've stitched this together from three grabs. It shows most of Boss's planned stores. As you can see, the model style is completely different - no doubt because there were no blueprints for these.

Here's a close-up of the last of the new stores and one of the original houses.

Finally, here's the police station/county building.

Backlot buildings get altered for different productions and many times the blueprints on file don't get updated for years- sometimes decades at a time.

Still on 'Welcome Back, Bo 'n' Luke', as Boss starts to tear down Cooter's signage he has a table full of blueprints, but none are shown any closer than here. I wonder if they were the blueprints for Cooter's.

When the 'Office' sign is removed you can see that the outline of the license plates is still visible underneath (they were moved to beside the door a couple of seasons back when the 'Hazzard Garage' sign was lowered). This is also the best look inside the office that we get. I think the support beam is just visible above the center of the knocked-down door.

The models appear to be at 1/4"=1' scale (or 1/48th). This is a standard architectural scale and the most common scale for backlot buildings to be drawn in, at least in my experience. For those into model railroading, this is closest to 'O' scale.

Boss's stores were probably done with art markers over a pencil drawing- the model is probably the original marker art as color copying wasn't a common thing in '83.

Boy, would I love to have those blueprints!!!

Mark

The blueprints appear to be elevation drawings (side views), likely of buildings from Hazzard Square.

In your second screencap, you can see what looks like that building from the square that has the tower (your building #15).

That's probably the most we ever see of the office part of Cooter's! It's really neat that when they take off the 'office' sign, you can see where the licence plates used to be several years earlier in season 1!

M