It’s Swag Swensday! Each week, we kick down some sweet, sweet swag to Autopian Members, the cool-kids club for car people that you really should have joined by now. Not a Member yet? You can get in on the fun with a Cloth Tier membership for a mere seven bucks a month (or break off $50 to cover the year, and it works out to way less than five dollars a month – it’s like 14 cents a day!). Become a Member today!
RoboCop (the 1987 version) has one of moviedom’s all-time laziest science fiction “future cars,” but it’s also one of my favorites. As any car person who has seen the film will tell you, the police cars that patrol the “Detroit” of the Robocop universe (filming was actually done in Dallas) are modified 1986 Ford Tauruses. And by “modified,” I mean they were painted flat black and dressed with standard 1980s patrol car bumpers and light bars, and … that’s it.
There were plans for the cops and Robo himself to drive futuristic vehicles constructed by the same team that built the notorious 6000 SUX, but the story goes that director Paul Verhoeven thought the patrol cars looked ridiculous and scrapped them on the spot. With no time left for a bespoke design, Verhoeven saw a Taurus and said (to paraphrase) “futuristic enough.” And the rest is movie history!
… and soon to become part of your own car-knick-nack history, since The Autopian is giving away this swell 1/24 scale die-cast model of RoboCop’s Taurus, complete with a RoboCop figure to stand guard – but not drive the vehicle, unless you remove his legs. Which, oddly enough, was required to fit Peter Weller into the Taurus when in costume as RoboCop. There’s some movie trivia for you.
Though inexpensive (around $30 on Amazon), Jada Toys has done a nice job of reproducing the Taurus in scale, complete with opening doors and hood.
The interior is more of a suggestion of the Taurus’ insides than a detailed reproduction, but who cares. The laptop is a nice touch though, as is the decal for the gauge faces.
Pop the hood and … hold up, RoboCop was driving an SHO? No, not in the movie at least, since the Taurus SHO didn’t even exist at the time, so Robo was matting the pedal on a 3.0-liter V6. But 1/24 scale Robo has a lot more power under his (possibly literally) lead foot, as that’s definitely the Yamaha-built 24-valve DOHC V6 rendered in plastic. Here’s the real thing, see?
Beneath the car, Jada has done what I assume is a reasonable job of duplicating some of the Taurus SHO’s underside details. There are also two big screw holes going through the exhaust, which I’m pretty sure the SHO did not have.
And here’s RoboCop! For a three-inch figure, I think he looks pretty good.
OK Members, watch your mailbox, RoboCop’s Taurus might be parked in there soon! Not a Member? Join today (or anytime before I make it to the post office) and you’ll be in the running.
More stuff to win next week!
All photos by Peter Vieira unless noted
Come on all you non members that are commenting on here, let’s keep this great site open and all these great writers employed.
They are providing us with great entertainment and knowledge of stuff that we all know we can’t find elsewhere.
For those that can’t truly afford it we appreciate you too.
I’ll become a member again when they fix the comments section.
(Zero idea if that is on the list of things to do as every employee I’ve asked ignores the question. Ignoring basic questions from members is another reason I am no longer a member)
And by “modified,” I mean they were painted flat black and dressed with standard 1980s patrol car bumpers and light bars, and … that’s it.
This is not quite it… Take a closer look. They modified Murphy’s car with conventional quad headlights behind the clear lenses, I think to make the car’s silhouette look better on camera when the headlights were on. Bummer that the model version doesn’t have that change!
And you gotta give Verhoeven more credit than a last minute decision… He saw the Taurus and thought it was futuristic at a time no one would have considered a Ford Taurus as a police car… and what did we see in 2013?! Ford Taurus police cars!
That movie predicted a bit too much of the future. Just watched it again the other night and the news reporters even talk about war taking place in Mexico. ED 209 is eerily similar to concerns about AI weapons being considered by our military now. I could go on.
I will plug my podcast, which is restarting soon (stay tuned!) – here’s our Robocop episode:
https://reelsandwheels.libsyn.com/robocop
Oh nice, I’ll check that out!
Thanks for expending the behind-the-scenes lore!
Not all of them had the weird modified headlights though.
https://imcdb.org/vehicle_6739-Ford-Taurus-DN5-1986.html
I hope this goes to someone in the Detroit Area, so we can get a picture of the 3″ with the 11′ Robocop figure. https://www.google.com/maps/search/robocop+statue+detroit/@42.3511333,-83.044116,128m/data=!3m1!1e3
3″ RoboCop can become an 11′ RoboCop if you place him close enough to the lens
Falling Dick Jones waves his freakishly long arms in your general direction.
Seriously, WTF was up with that puppet