It is with no small degree of sadness that the recent news of the shuttering of Road Race Replicas has caused me to make a decision about something I’ve been pondering for a long time. As much as I hate to do it, I have decided to retire one of the best and most beautiful cars in my entire collection from active racing. Due to its value and irreplaceability, I am going to remove my “tropical turquoise” ’65 Ford Mustang fastback from the racing fleet.
Mounted on one of the earliest of the screaming fast light brown “Barn Find” chassis I bought, and fitted with Vincent wheels and low profile tires to clear the tight wheel wells, this is the 3rd of the RRR Mustang Fastbacks I acquired, and I was lucky enough to score it on ePay long after the limited run of this color was sold out. I think I paid $50 for it in mid-2020, which seemed like a high price at the time, but if I were to try to buy one now I couldn’t duplicate it for 4x that price, and that’s assuming I could even find one. I really went the extra mile on this car, spending painstaking amounts of time applying decals to it to customize its look, and it came out so well that every time I put it on the track I start to worry. It’s no fun having a car so valuable you can’t enjoy it. I can’t risk crashing and possibly breaking this car because doing so would break my heart; even if I were able to find a replacement for it, it just wouldn’t be the same.
But I can enjoy it as a display piece, so, as fast as it is, that’s what it is going to become. I’m not going to cannibalize it either, and use its lightning-fast chassis for another car; nope, there’s no way this beauty is going to suffer that kind of indignity; it’s being retired in-tact, just as it is, to live in a display case.
Taking its place in the muscle car fleet, the newly built Auto World lime green AMX will step in. Although this is by no means an adequate replacement, it does keep the muscle car fleet numbers complete.
There will be a special event at Drag City during the next Muscle Car Rumble when “Group B” comes out to race to honor the career of Jeff “Road Runner” Ramsey and his beautiful Mustang as they prepare to head for that great shelf in the toy room. It’s a real shame that my favorite vendor decided to call its quits, but we’ll always have “Tropical Twist.”
I think that is a wise decision. It could still be enjoyed as a cruisers sometimes but with something this beautiful and valuable, it’s best treated like the royalty it is!