This piece has been buried in MY garage ever since I got it. I did some initial clean up on it, then got distracted and lost interest in it. With all of my other recent car acquisitions, I figured it was time to dust this off and take a good look at it.
I am 100% certain that this yellow cab is molded from a studio original. What makes me certain??? In one of the pictures to the left, you will see the taxi cab photographed next to a resin pour of an undercarriage. This resin pour is directly from Digital Domain. While the position of the parts does not match precisely, the overall layout and size does.
After establishing the yellow taxi as the “real deal”, I took another look at the miniature that I got from another source. While the undercarriage is admittedly rebuilt, I was under the impression that the top half of the car was from studio molds. However, upon inspection, you can see that not only is the taxi significantly smaller, but it’s a totally different sculpt. When looking at it more closely, you can kind of see how the white cab has many of the curves and details wrong. Oh well.
I recently read the issue of Cinefex that did a write up on The Fifth Element, and learned that this scale of Taxi and car was used for background stationary cars. For example, when Leeloo first emerges from the ventilation pipe over New York, you see across the street a repair station. In that station are miniatures of this size. Cinefex also shows a still photo to corroborate this theory. The article goes on to say that all of the background cars were CGI, while the ‘hero’ cab and police cars were either 1 to 1, or a one quarter scale miniature.
This information came in handy to me, as it eliminated a couple of theories I had about the taxis.
This particular piece is missing three pieces. The engine nozzles, and the front repulsor fork. Fortunately for me, the undercarriage pour from Digital Domain has the fork on it. The engine nozzles are another story. I know of a chap on the internet who has molds of those pieces, but the mold is currently lost. My quest for a 100% genuine and accurate Fifth Element taxi continues.