“Bitchin’ Camaro, bitchin’ Camaro, I ran over my neighbor
Bitchin’ Camaro, bitchin’ Camaro, now I’m in all the papers
My folks bought me a bitchin’ Camaro with no insurance to match
So if I have to run you down, please don’t leave a scratch”
That little ditty is probably the best track from the best album by mostly mediocre punky novelty act The Dead Milkmen, an album I remember fondly from my high school days when I and some classmates referred to it as “BLIMBY.” For obvious reasons that song came to mind when writing this post!
The inconsistency of AW’s body selection bothers me sometimes. Some of them are so small-close to 1:76-that you would swear they were Aurora originals, like the ‘69 AMX and the ’64 GTO. Others are about the same size of what we usually think of as 1:64. There are a few, though, that seem oversized. I suppose its no different than the Matchboxes and Hot Wheels of my youth, when often things were out of proportion and you were willing to forgive that because they were toys. I went into some detail about this in one of my earlier posts, but I’m revisiting the topic here because I’m not sure what to do with this pair of ’68 Camaros I just finished customizing.
These are not the first examples of this AW body in my collection; there are 2 of them in the Trans Am fleet, which I’ve owned for a while. I have, however, avoided adding these bodys to the muscle car racing fleet over concerns about proportion. This is especially because one of the very excellent Model Motoring bodies of the ’67 Camaro RS is already twice represented in the muscle car fleet, and I’m very fond of this body, seeing as how it has nice detail even if the proportions are not completely accurate. Of course, I could argue that the MM body is too small, especially since it took a great deal of carving up with the Dremel to get them to fit over the Ultra-G chassis! I didn’t want to do that again, so the 2 copies of this body that run in the muscle racing fleet are probably all that will ever be there; additional versions of this same body I have added to my collection have found their way to The Road Crew, where they exist comfortably atop original Aurora Thunderjet 500’s. The proportions of the Auto World ’68 version of the same car seem spot-on, and of course it fits over the Ultra-G chassis with room to spare as it was designed to do! Rendered as an open-headlight model rather than the slick RS version, its capable of being dressed up in almost any way-a street brawler, a cruiser, a Trans Am Racer-just like the real thing.
Yet, due to its larger size, it just looks out of place with some of the other bodies. When AW released a series called “Muscle Car Dealerships” and presented these bodies anew in two great colors as Yenko hot rods, I couldn’t resist them. Right off the bat I had an issue trying to fit custom wheels to them because the wheels were too small and the axles too short for the large body. I knew there was a solution to this, however, as Vincent makes their awesome wheel sets in no fewer than 5 different widths, from the narrowest (size “A”) to the widest (side “E”). So, I hit the web and bought 2 sets of styles I thought would look good on a ‘68 Camaro in the sizes they call “D” and “E.” By adding my signature spacers to the front axles I was able to spread the wheels out far enough to the sides of the body that they looked realistic, but I also never thought I’d buy any wheels in this size.
They look so awesome all set up and ready to go that its hard to imagine I could keep them off the track, but since I’m made decisions about who stays at Drag City and who migrates out to the Road Crew based largely on scale consistency, I have to wonder if I’m breaking my own rules by joining these cars to the muscle racers.
“When I drive past the kids, they all spit and cuss
Cuz I’ve got a bitchin’ Camaro and they have to ride the bus…“
But hey, who am I kidding? I made an issue out of cars that were too small, not too big, right? And in comparison to an average late ‘60’s Matchbox car-which will always be my go-to standard for scaling since the old Matchboxes remain my first and deepest passion-they look just about right…if I squint a little. It does make me wonder, though; why does Auto World not pay more attention to this? Well, I guess we could ask the same of Matchbox and Hot Wheels! So, fire ‘em up and let’s race!
● AZTEC ●
The copperish-red car – which I believe approximates the beautiful Chevrolet paint color “Aztec Bronze” from 1967, which gave the car its name – is a 396 big block raced by Jack “Rocky Road” Rafferty of Branson, Missouri, a thrill seeking gambler who brought his car to the once-Golden State to try his luck at the hairiest road course in the land. She’s fitted with American Racing wheels, all disc brakes, and a Muncie M20 4-speed
● MAXIMILIAN ●
The deep blue version is a race-built 350 SBC, producing about the same output as “Aztec’s” 396 with less weight, and is rowed with a modified Richmond 5-speed. She wears the always-in-style Torque Thrusts and is the property of William “Wizzard” Westcott, a Huntington Beach surfer from the right side of the tracks who traded his long board for muscle cars in his teenage years.
Both cars have mostly stock black interiors and are street legal but were built for the road course, but with different power and profiles and raced by very different drivers, its anyone’s guess who will come out on top when these “stocky” Camaros hit the track!
I haven’t thought of the Dead Milkmen in years and remember this song well from my high school days when for a brief time I had a Z28 though it was far from “bitchen”. Thanks for the blast from the past.