Road Crew Expansion: Another Pair of Aurora Originals + a Beautiful Repro

It seems like only a couple of months ago that I mentioned that I wasn’t planning on adding any more cars to The Road Crew. Ha ha! Well, you all know how that goes, right? Over the past month or so I’ve found some really good deals online. This is a little puzzling to me, since over the last couple of years the prices on these toys have been skyrocketing, but lately I’ve been getting lucky, and when you find deals like these you don’t want to let them go! So, here are 3 new additions to the The Crew, 2 originals from the early ‘60’s and a reproduction nearly as rare as the original!

I’ll start off in reverse order of usual with the reproduction: I wasn’t planning on adding another ’68 El Camino to The Crew, but there is a vendor who appears to have a small selection of these very hard to find “Nu-Rora” (aka Road Race Replicas) reproductions which are virginal and unmounted at what I think are very fair prices. So, like the green Mustang before, I happened upon this beautiful white Camino with a black top and bed cover and it was so purty I just could not pass it up! And thus, here it is! Bought as a body only, it now rides on one my very few remaining “deep stash” NOS Aurora chassis, a late production version with the white/green field magnets, so it performs great, having needed only new set of wheels, a lot of oil, and a breaking-in period to get it running tip-top.

Here’s a real rare event, an auction win that was a good deal! That rarely happens, so it has to be said that it was just dumb luck that I was able to get this original yellow Riviera for probably about half the usual B.I.N. price because I was one of only 2 bidders, and I was willing to spend a lot more for it than I did! The reason is that I want this body-probably my favorite Aurora original, since I love the real car-in every color it was made in, and this yellow one is one of the 2 remaining “obtainable” colors I didn’t have, leaving only the turquoise one left to bag before I have to start looking at taking out a second mortgage to get the uber-rare gray and slate blue ones.

This was a great buy because as you can see the body is in superb condition. The chassis, however, needed quite a bit more work than I was expecting, considering it was complete and looked good. It is an original early closed-rivet with a “X-mas tree” motor (or “Tri-Color,” as I like to call them: red, green, gold) so it was worth the effort to get it going, but I had to replace quite a few parts to coax it back to health, including 2 wheels, 4 tires, new brushes, and new field magnets. It still doesn’t run as well as I would like so I may install a pair of later, more powerful “cheater” magnets in it at some point, but for now its doing OK on the original low-power black magnets (although they are a different pair than it came with, as I elected to install a still-original but slightly more powerful pair from my parts bin). Even if the chrome is a little worn, I still got it for a great price and it looks terrific lined up in the parking lot with all its little sisters in their various colors.

And lastly, we have one that definitely isn’t rare, but I bought this as a “rescue mission” since it was really trashed, and I got it at an irresistible price: this red copy of the Jaguar E-Type coupe. Like the yellow Riviera, this one sits on an original-era closed rivet chassis with a “X-mas tree” motor and original black field magnets. The wheel wells were uncut and the A-pillars were unbroken, so for the price I paid for it I thought it was worth buying, but this one needed a lot of work to bring back to scratch, which will be the subject of my next post because, as you know, dear readers, I just LOVE saving these old ones! So stay tuned for the details on that, since I’ll again be asking for any other collectors out there to opine on what I ought to do with it next!