It wasn’t too long ago that I wrote a post about moving the Road Crew Uptown with some expensive cars. Well, that ol’ wheel has rolled around again, because this post is the opposite! So, what do you do when you have a small group of rough, scrap-built early Thunderjet 500 closed rivet chassis sitting around collecting dust, all of which were cobbled together from random parts, and run well enough, but none are great performers? Well, you delve into the “body box” and see what spares you might come up with to mount on them, or you acquire new bodies! In this case I did both, but this quadruped of muscley-type cars from 1967 don’t have the high performance magnets or fancy 5-lug wheels you might expect; these are “basic transportation,” sheep-in-wolves’-clothing which mirror their faster counter parts across the aisle!
Chevy Malibu in maroon with black top:
OK, sure, it has the SS hood, and if you look real close you might be able to make out the little “SS” badge on the grille, but nonetheless, the way it runs – and in this elegant yet understated color – this seems more like a regular Malibu hardtop than an SS. Surely this car must be a little 283 V8 with a Rochester 2-Jet and a 2-speed Powerglide, just like the 1:1-scale Lemonwood Yellow ’66 I once owned back in my younger years. I sure miss that car, so I’ll enjoy cruising around with this one!
Pontiac LeMans (right?) in “basic green”
Well yeah, if you don’t look too hard at the GTO logos on the grille and the rear quarters, this could be a nicely equipped but still very “adult” LeMans 2-dr HT, probably owned by a high school science teacher, because who else would choose this shade of solid green? No doubt a fair-to-midland 326 V8 sits under that hood in spite of the bulge that makes it looks like it’s hiding a tri-power 389. Whoever owns it sure keeps it nice and clean, though!
Cougar scrapper
Here we have a “junker” that was in the crew briefly for a while and then removed, which is now making a return which-I admit-is likely to also be temporary. Using my recently improved method of polishing, I decided to do another round of “improvements” to this body, which was once a Tuff Ones racer that a previous owner sanded all the tampo paint off of, leaving it solid “snow white,” a color the Cougar was never made in. I disassembled the car completely to buff and clean it, also buffing and cleaning the window insert thoroughly, then put it back together using the chrome marker and a red Sharpie to neaten up the edges. Of course it’s still a junker, but the chassis, which holds a recently replaced motor, is surprisingly fast! I’m considering this to be a “place holder” until I can find one of these in turquoise, which appears to be the rarest color to find this body in and thus the most expensive. I’ll get one eventually, but at the moment there are many more things I want to spend money on, so this beater can bounce around the track for a while looking better than it did the last time.
Plymouth Belvedere
Pay no attention to those GTX-style vents on the hood; this black cruiser looks like a government issue fleet car with a touch of evil, because unlike the other 3 cars here that are running on junk chassis, this one sits on a brand new bright red T-Dash. This represents the most significant downgrade of this group because I removed the original high performance field magnets, which I set aside and carefully labeled as to their origins, and replaced them with a set of very weak old solid black magnets from an Aurora original to cut its performance in half, making it run like the 318 2 barrel-equipped Belvedere it’s supposed to be. If you are wondering why anyone would do that, it’s because the HO Highway is all about cruising at low speeds, and as I mentioned here, the very high performance cars are much tougher to handle on this course than they would be on a racing track like Drag City. Not to mention that I already have a pair of very fine high performance GTX’s in the road crew! Fear not, race fans, as I’m sure there’ll come a day when I will want to put those original magnets back in and run this chassis as the terror its supposed to be, but for now it provides a smooth, predictable ride and a nice red “interior” for this “basic black Belvedere”
So there’s the latest additions to the ever growing, always cruising Road Crew! Let’s pack a picnic basket and grab some blankets, I feel a Sunday drive coming on!
I think these are really cool cruisers and that it’s great how you modified them to make these into cool and functional cars to enjoy!