The “penultimate” inductee into my numbered racing car fleet isn’t a spectacular car, because the number of bodies of this type of car available for T-Jets is disappointingly small. Granted, the greatest of the greats are available, and its nice to have a handful of the less common cars represented, like the Maserati 3500GT and the Lola Mk 6. So, Trans-Am type cars notwithstanding, I was looking to complete my fleet of 64 cars and not finding a huge number of options unless I wanted to buy a 4th Cobra Daytona coupe or a 4th Ferrari 250 GTO, each of which would have cost well over $100. The money wasn’t really the deterrent, however; its that there are already several bodies in my fleet that I have 4 copies of (I did a post on my “Thunderjet Tetragrammaton”) and I don’t want to keep duplicating the same cars over and over again no matter how great they look. So to round out the fleet, I focused on the cars I had only one example of and found 2 different ones I liked enough to buy a second copy of. One of them was this car, the Ford J.
With its “breadvan” roofline, the J-Car was as ugly as its predecessor the G.T.-40 was beautiful, and its also a historical footnote because it never really got to strut its stuff on the international stage. On top of its unappealing looks, the J-Car’s reputation is further soiled in that a variant of it was the car legendary driver Ken Miles was killed in while testing at Riverside Speedway after infamously being cheated out of his LeMans win by a botched PR stunt in 1966.
To this day no one really knows how the crash that killed Miles occurred, and naturally all kinds of weird conspiracy theories have grown up around the mystery, including the “he faked his own death and is living on a tropical island” trope. Regardless, after that tragedy, a decision was made somewhere, by someone, to scrap the J-car project, but many of the advances that went into it were incorporated into the Mk IV variation of G.T.-40, with which Ford went on to win LeMans 3 more years in a row.
None of this prevented the gearheads of the day from finding the car interesting, however, and on paper its potential seemed tremendous; its chassis design was revolutionary, and it graced many a magazine cover as well as being modeled by Hot Wheels as one of their legendary original “sweet 16” released in ’68. In testing at LeMans in ’66 it recorded the fastest lap time ever set to that date, so its appropriate that such a car be included in my racing fleet. Even if it is ugly.
The white one with blue stripes would have been more historically accurate but I decided that was too similar to the blue and yellow one I already had, so I opted for the red and black version, which is not only harder to find but probably the best looking color combo this body was made in. And like many of the racing fleet cars, this one started off as a Cigar Box model with a good body, but missing all 4 tires and with a dismounted rear axle-a perfect candidate for a slot conversion. Overall I’m pleased with how it came out, with its aluminum finish Vincent wheels and yellow decal adverts. The headlamp decals further dress up the appearance from the factory silver-painted squares. And being the “penultimate” member of the fleet, it was only right to give it racing #63.
