A few days ago when I posted about my 3rd trip to my rural T-jet treasure mine, I said I had added 5 new cars to the Road Crew. There was, however, a 6th car that I brought home that day from that magical little shop in the middle of nowhere, and I’ve been keeping this one under my hat because it’s been something of a mystery. I wanted some time to do some research on it but I’ve come up blank, so now I’m posting as an appeal to any other slot car fans out there who might be able to tell me about this car.
This is a model of a series 1 Sunbeam Alpine. It has no maker’s marks on the body anywhere. It appears to be made of resin, but if so it is extremely well done. I believe that this was modeled on the Husky Models die-cast version, a model that, although hard to find, I do have in my collection, though like so many copies it is missing its windshield, as they are very easily broken off. However, what makes this so amazing for a resin casting is that the front bumper and grille and rear bumper assemblies are actually separate pieces which have been adhered to the body, as are the top and windshield. If this is indeed a “home made” resin body and not a factory made piece, I’ve never seen one built like this, in multiple pieces and then assembled after the fact; almost all resin slot car bodies are molded from a single monolithic piece.
In addition to everything else, its also molded in a very unusual color, an intensely bright green. You can see that the tan top was painted, and that paint has been extended to the top of the dashboard-the brush marks are visible underneath-but the green appears to be the original color of the substrate.
So, who made this car? Where did it come from? Does anyone know?
The next question I’m facing it what to do with it! Of course it came mounted on a great running Aurora open-rivet chassis and it performs great just as it is, so I could leave it in the Road Crew fleet, but in a way that seems like kind of a waste; though it is small, it is just big enough that I might be able to get away with adding it to my sports car racing fleet. To do so, I would have to fit it to an AW Ultra-G chassis, and although preliminary test fitting makes it appear that that will work, I won’t really know until I try to screw it to a chassis fitted with custom axles, wheels and tires, and I really don’t want to start grinding material out of this body for such a fit. I have no idea how rare it may be since I have no idea where it came from, so I am reluctant to mess with it. What I know for sure is that I’ve never seen another one anywhere, and so far I’ve haven’t been able to find out anything about it on the interwebz.
If anyone out there reading this can tell me anything about this car, please contact me: I’m very curious to find out anything I can about it!
Oh, wow, this is a fascinating mystery! I’ll be curious to hear what you find out and can understand leaving it intact until more is known!