How To Make a Replica of Walt Disney's Car

So, here's all you have to do.  First, drive up the 5 Freeway to Walt Disney Imagineering to request the original blueprints for Walt Disney's personal "Runabout" (making sure you have a valid project job number or you will get nowhere). After a full day spent searching their computer data bases, flipping through slide binders and rifling through old folders, try not to be too downhearted when you discover there isn't a single blueprint of Walt's car anywhere to be found.

Next go track down Bob Gurr, the retired Imagineer who, when only in his twenties, designed all of Disneyland's Main Street vehicles, Autopia cars, monorails, submarines, bobsleds and omnimovers, and buy him dinner and drinks, during which you strategically steer the conversation to be all about blueprints.  Try not to be too downhearted when Bob explains there never were any blueprints drawn for Walt's Runabout (because back then they could just build things without blueprints because they were all geniuses.)  But prepare to cheer up quickly when Bob magically brings forth a tattered piece of vellum with a beautiful pencil rendering of the car that he drew in 1960!

Bob's rendering and photos of Walt and Lillian Disney, and their grandchildren.

Notice the car's fringed roof was sometimes on—and sometimes off.

Now, head on down to Disneyland to study Walt Disney's car in person.  There were actually four of them built, and two still reside in Anaheim.  They don't appear in public much anymore, although when Bob Gurr received his Window on Main Street last year, he was escorted to the event site in one.  Make sure you are at that event, too, and take tons of pictures.
Realizing you need to get much more personal with the thing if your replica is going to turn out any good at all, hunt down the car in its parking spot backstage and photograph every detail you see.

If possible, climb up onto something really tall, like an electrical parade float or something, and photograph the car from above.

Special things like headlamps and tail lights should be photographed from every angle. Front, back, sides, top.

Crawl under the car and photograph the entire undercarriage, axles, drive chain and shaft, and those crazy old-fashioned shock absorbers.  (Gasp in amazement that the tires are actually from Italian motorcycles!)
After taking almost 100 photos and taking measurements of everything with the measuring tape you almost didn't remember to bring with you, go back to your desk and create a whole book of diagrams that explains everything you saw.  Don't leave anything out except for the details that are too miniscule to sculpt.

That goes for the paint details, too.  

Finally, go back to Bob Gurr and ask him what color you should make your replica since, after all, there were four cars with four different color schemes. He will tell you that his personal favorite was the maroon version seen in the 1960 photo below.  (Thank you, Daveland.)

So you make your little car maroon. 

And you think it looks real snazzy.

Our "Walt's Car" replica was released on October 16, 2010 for Disneyland's 55th Anniversary.  Bob Gurr himself joined us at the signing event at the Gallery on Main Street.  It was a fun, nostalgic morning at Disneyland that we'll never forget.