[niteowl77]

I used to have a contact through work that was part of R&D and tooling teams at a couple of plastic model manufacturers, and once you got him going, he had some great stories about the real cars and pitfalls involved with making models thereof. A lot of them were too delicate to really do much more than be gently driven short distances at an event, and some of them that could actually go out on the street were miserably cumbersome.

I also found out about the model industry trick of putting a subtle but deliberate flaw in a part to detect if someone else ever ripped off their work through duplication.

[fullchroma]

We visited the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville the day before yesterday and saw some beauties. A couple of your pics are from there.

Modern cars are so boring. They all look alike!

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

I’m a gearhead, and I don’t really any of them.

[Vaquero]

Ahh. George Barris

[Libloather]

I made the baron car (pic #2) as a model back in the day. The babe wasn’t included. I would’ve remembered that.

[Chode]

remember almost all of them, built a lot of them, but never saw the Raider Wagon before...

[BradyLS]

Topps used to have a trading card set of a lot of those cars. Plastic kits for some of them were made as well. I distinctly remember a buddy and I assembling the “The Paddy Wagon.”

Those are some amazing cars! The work and detail that went into them without the benefit of the advanced technologies we now enjoy is astounding! Thanks for posting them!

[Windflier]

Rat Fink!

[Snickering Hound]

Jokermobile...

[rockrr]

I’m a generation removed from the guys who built these odd gems. As a kid I remember lovingly constructing the models and imagining driving them - as improbable as that notion seemed.

Then we had some gearheads move into the neighborhood. One was the son of a wealthy beer distributor who had the winning combination of good looks, incredible luck and a seemingly endless flow of dollars. His buddy Gary was a Tom Jones look-alike (at Jones’s pinnacle of popularity). Both were into “fast cars, faster women and wild times”.

They had drag boats and motorcycles, and cars that were to die for. My brother and I were constantly at their place drooling over them and instead of shooing us away they allowed us to see and touch and eventually help work on them.

When I was 14 and my brother 12 we got to enter our own car into the annual Seattle Hot Boat and Speed Show. It was a ‘23 T roadster that really belonged to Gary but he allowed us to assume “ownership” for the show. It wasn’t as exotic as the ones in the pictures but you couldn’t tell us that - we were floating on air that year!

[ETL]

[chicken head]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6-yVoJTCo8

[Chauncey Gardiner]

Count me amongst the kids who spent hours making models of several of these cars. Wouldn’t trade those times for any video game the kids spend time on nowadays.

[ETL]

[wjcsux]

I remember most of these cars. Winfield, Roth and Barris really showed some creativity in those days.

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[PLMerite]

The one made out of two bathtubs should be in a Cialis commercial.