OK, at this point, this is making no sense at all; I’m clearly just looking for an excuse to keep buying and building cars. And you know what? I’m OK with that! And so, for no reason other than a sudden whim, I decided to do yet another swap that amounts to nothing more than a “color change,” migrating another established racer out of my Ultra G muscle car fleet to the Road Crew and replacing it with a newly acquired body identical to it except for color.
Unfortunately, this one is going to make the “The Lore” a little more difficult than most because this color change will affect a car’s name! What you see here is my latest late-night impulse buy, this fluorescent lemon-yellow Model Motoring ’69 Yenko Camaro, which takes over the chassis that was on the orange Model Motoring ’69 Yenko Camaro, which has now been mounted on a “suddenly available” surplus early Johnny Lightning chassis and become the latest member of the Road Crew!
When I look back over my hundreds of “Meet the Fleet” profiles of the last 3.3 years, I don’t see that I never did an “entry” on “Orange Sunshine,” the ’69 big block Camaro driven by Roscoe “Redline” Roberts. He is in the “table,” though, and has been racing with the Ultra G fleet for several years! He got a wheel change last year, but now he’s getting a complete repaint!
The Roberts brothers, Roscoe and Wade, hail from rural Tennessee, where they were raised on Chevrolets and both drive Camaros regularly at Drag City. Elder brother “Wide Open” Wade races “El Grande”, the ’72 Z-28 RS equipped with a very much not original 427 big block, while the younger “Redline” Roscoe managed to acquire a stripped and virtually destroyed yet nonetheless very rare and valuable ’69 Yenko in his youth. Though the original 427 and 4-speed drivetrain was long gone, he took years bringing the car back to health, replacing the drivetrain with an equivalent one and eventually painting the car the same shade of orange his brother used on his own car, and naming his road-race equipped monster “Orange Sunshine.”
Perhaps out of a desire for a stronger identity apart from his brother, or perhaps due to a body-damaging mishap he won’t own up to publicly, the younger Roberts brother recently chose to do a full repaint on his ’69, changing it from a bright orange to an even brighter yellow. With the help from a few sponsor dollars, he’s also done some recent mechanical upgrades to make the car more competitive, including new aluminum cylinder heads, a bigger radiator and water pump for improved cooling, and a new exhaust for better flow. All this has given him a significant horsepower bump and a small weight reduction, so as the 1986 racing season gears up, he’ll be faster than ever!
The only question then: what to name her? They say its bad luck to rename a ship, but it happens all the time anyway; does the same go for cars? “Redline” certainly hopes not, as he has settled on the name “ZEUS” for his newly brightened stomper, honoring the king of Greek gods; it’s a powerful handle for a powerful car that brings the thunder its name suggests! When the next muscle car bash kicks off, we’ll see if all his upgrades add up to more than just sound and fury on the track!
Since you love building these so much, that love and enjoyment is enough to keep going with your magnificent machines. 🙂