Why, there’s afoot now…and aarm and ahand as well, thems belonging to your trusty blogger who is shown here engaged in the somewhat nasty chore of cleaning decades of grime from a little 12-count 1:64 car case by an “odd/off” manufacturer from the 1960’s. Actually, this old case I picked up for cheap is pretty cool, having some “provenance” in the form of a hand written list of “my cars” on the back, done with (most likely) a blue Bic ball-point (remember those?!) listing some pretty cool old Hot Wheels, even a few from the original “Sweet 16.” It was dirty and needed a lot of scrubbing with cleaner and a rinse under a hot shower (jobs like this are often best accomplished in the tub) but it cleaned up pretty well, and fortunately most of that penmanship on the back survived.
And why would anyone buy a case designed to hold only 12 cars? What good is that?
Well, its great if you are building a specific racing fleet of exactly 12 slot cars…and that’s the “number of this beast,” as the Trans Am fleet will have just that many cars and no more!
Well, we know how that goes, right? I figured that by buying a 12 car case I would “encourage” myself to keep a lid of my expenditures by limiting my expansion space. The idea is that 12 cars is a good number to run a tournament, but of course it does create that “odd number” problem in the 3rd heat with 3 cars, so I suppose its just theoretically possible it might expand to 16…at some point.
But for now its 12, and I bought this case just in time for cars that are now beginning to arrive. And in fact, our first new build of the Trans Am series has just left the shop and is getting tuned for her first time trial!
The 1st NEW Addition to the All Trans Am Fleet!
After adding the necessary racing number (86, can’t even why I picked that number, it just occurred to me from out of nowhere) and a couple of sponsor adverts (Valvoline, Perfect Circle) it was time to mount it on a brand new Ultra-G chassis.
As I emphatically stated, my intention to is run all the cars in this fleet on stock Auto World wheels and tires, but I did choose to ditch the chrome wheels this one came with in favor of a set of red take-offs from another chassis. That little addition did a lot for the look of this car, and the stock tires imprinted with the Firestone “Wide-Oval” logo was a great finishing touch. My love for Ramblers means there will always be a place on my racing track for an American Motors product, so with the addition of this here AMX there are now 5 cars in the new Trans Am fleet, but 3 more should be arriving any day now! The first “All TA tournament” can’t be far behind, so as always, stay tuned!
I have to say that case is great and the providence (funny you mention that as I’ve been watching a lot of the Antiques Roadshow lately and they talk about that a lot). It all sounds perfect for the new fleet that you are building!