If you have the temerity to cast your eyes back to this post from November of 2023, I have the temerity to be consistent about my panic! I remember headlines like these…
I seem to remember a promise not to do any more “world policing” in the middle east…you don’t suppose we were lied to, do you???
You’re a good man, Joe…Good luck to you!
It does seem to suggest a shift — from suggestive, high-temperature rhetoric designed to rattle nerves and dominate headlines, to something more bounded, more lawyerly, and more carefully delimited once the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Russia and Iran was actually signed in Moscow on January 17, 2025. Why that happened is open to interpretation. Maybe it was the campaign-season media climate, where every ominous phrase gets amplified into prophecy. Maybe it was deliberate strategic ambiguity, useful while tensions were high and details were still fluid. Or maybe it was simply the eternal gap between a politician’s headline-friendly flourish and the dry, limiting fine print of a real treaty. Whatever the reason, the public record seems to support a definite softening of tone, even if it does not fully explain the motive behind it.
So I’m just sure that WW III is not on our doorstep!
Well, regardless, it seems like this is a good time to spend a lot of time in the basement…the deep, blast-resistant concrete basement…yeah! So crank up some good music and let’s HUNKERDOWN!
And hey, the basement is where all my cool stuff is! So everything is ok…right?
This week’s post is going to be a grab bag of goodies from the toy room, as none of these fragments really have the weight to justify an entire post of their own. So, in the interest of keeping everyone informed about the action around Drag City, let’s take a quick look at a few inconsequential, but still interesting changes…
1. A Tale of Two Roadrunners
A couple of weeks ago I happened to find a couple of Hot Wheels I hadn’t yet acquired while walking randomly through the local Wallyworld. One of these was a variation on the seemingly endless “Fast & Furious” series, which confuses me because some of those are Car Culture Premium versions that are all metal with rubber tires, and others, like this one, are cheaper, with plastic bases and wheels, but still better detailing than a mainline. Whatever; I picked up this nicely detailed metallic gray 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner.
A couple of months ago, I picked up a Premium ‘70 Roadrunner that I had seen around, and here’s exactly what I mean: this one was also badged as a “Fast & Furious” release! This last Monday I decided to open the pair of them and choose which one to put on the diorama, and I was surprised to discover that, although they are models of the exact same car, they are completely different castings that bear nothing in common with one another! That came as a surprise, and it made me want to dig through my cases for the original release of the ’70 Roadrunner from 1998.
Comparing them side-by-side, it’s clear that this recent gray release is the original casting, but even here there are some subtle differences: a close examination of the original car shows some “crisping up” of the lines, particularly around the roof pillars and the shape and size of the back window. The glass insert also appears to be of higher quality formation and thinner than the original.
Close side-by-side comparison of the original 1998 ’70 Roadrunner to this recent release reveals that it is the same casting, but even so there have been some very slight modifications
The newer Premium, however, is a completely different animal: in a way I actually think the earlier car is a little bit more accurate to the shape of the real one, but the way this new Premium release is put together, with its Halibrand-style wheels and “Six Pac” hood scoop and period-correct paint, it’s just irresistible, so it probably goes without saying that that’s the one I chose.
Over the years, this busty babe in the green dress and pink go-go boots has been standing by an Iso Grifo, an Aston Martin DBS, and now the Roadrunner! Either she has a LOT of money and a LOT of cars, or she’s just posing by other people’s cool stuff in the parking lot! Either way, she looks mighty good!
Previously, our pair of “mall chicks” were cruising around in a canary yellow mid ‘60s Karmann Ghia. Now, they’ve traded up to this year’s model, and are cruising past the muscle dudes outside the Drag-O-Way Motel in their ‘87 ‘Cabriolet! How cuuuuuute!
An interesting note about this Matchbox model is that it is the British-market version of the Cabriolet, which was actually the high performance GTI model, as identified by the quad headlamps. This configuration was never available in the US, where the Cabriolet was little more than a Rabbit convertible, although the name Rabbit had been dropped by the late ‘80s.
Egad, how I HATED these cars back in the day! Sold only in white, black, or bright red, they were always bought by a certain SoCal suburban contingent. I hate them still today, but there’s no denying that they are icons of their era, so when Matchbox released this one in their Moving Parts series with opening doors, I thought the casting was so good that it had to go on the diorama somewhere! Putting our already present “boppy chix” in it was a no-brainer, but I admit I miss the canary yellow Karmann Ghia: I mean, that’s one of the VW’s that I actually like!
3. Did The Earth Move?
The mint green Mini is one of 3 new cars on the freeway. Something I’ve attempted to do is use “forced perspective” by putting the larger cars (Greenlights, some HW Premiums, late-Universal era Matchboxes) on the ends of the freeway, and the slightly smaller cars (including the Matchbox Convoy Shell tanker truck) toward the middle of the table. Not sure if its worked or not, but to my eye it looks decent
Simply Red’s 1985 hit single “Money’s Too Tight To Mention”, a screed against Reaganomics, ended with the refrain “Did the Earth move for ya, Nancy?” Well, it’s moving for me, as the basement of my old house tends to do! I noticed earlier this week that the “road tape” on Interstate 8 is beginning to curl upward a little bit at the break in the foam base that forms the structure of the freeway. That’s not too surprising since it’s been several years since I built this, and the years of temperature changes and humidity in the basement are taking their toll. Eventually, I will have to carefully put some glue underneath the edges of the road with a tiny brush and stick them back down, but for now I chose the expedient of simply covering the seam with the cars on the highway!
The maroon Jaguar XJ6C (Matchbox) and the lime green Buick GS-X (Hot Wheels) are also new on the freeway; most of the rest of the cars have been rearranged and changed positions significantly.
That forced me to tighten up the traffic a little bit, which gave me the opportunity to add a few more cars! And you know what we always say here at thunderjetheaven.com: more cars is always good!
The seam where the 2 pieces of foam that form the bed of the elevated interstate meet: as of this photo, its about as tight as it can be without some type of filler, but you can see how the road is curling at the edges. That needs to be addressed, but for now, merely putting vehicles over it helps, and it’s a sure bet the passengers in that Lipstick Red Lincoln Mk III aren’t feeling those cracks in the pavement!
One thing that I don’t understand, though, is how the two pieces of foam appear to have gotten out of alignment. The road actually jogged over slightly where the break occurs, forcing me to figure out how to move the smaller piece foam maybe an 1/8th of an inch in the least disruptive way. I figured it out and got them set tightly again, but I do wonder how that happened: could be a sign of more subsidence in my basement… or could just be my slow descent into insanity!
Your humble blogger being all vexed
Anyway, it seemed like a good opportunity to squeeze a few more cars in onto the layout and as we know, the traffic in Southern California is always getting worse, so in that respect, it adds realism!
And that’s about all the news I have for you today, dear readers! Drop in on me again this weekend when I will hopefully have some more exciting news from Drag City!!
The original and the first: the 1964 Matchbox model, #32 in the 1-75 series, seen at Drag City!
Well, only a single drop this weekend, readers; as is so often the case these days, a lot of other things are claiming my time, so this Sunday post will have to do, but I hope you’ll find it to be a good one! Velkommen to our 5th installment of Modelo en Bofus, the occasional series in which we take a closer look at the real machines that inspired the tiny racers circulating around our slot tracks—cars whose stories, specifications, and cultural impact are every bit as fascinating as the slot-car versions battling it out on our living room floors or basement tables! And for today’s subject, we are focusing on one your humble blogger’s dream cars, one of my favorites of all time!
Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons presents the E-type coupe to invited media at the Parc des Eaux Vives, Geneva in 1961
Few automobiles have ever arrived with the kind of impact that accompanied the debut of the Jaguar E-Type in March of 1961. When Jaguar unveiled the car at the Geneva Motor Show it stunned the automotive world. With its impossibly long bonnet, delicate cockpit, and flowing aerodynamic bodywork derived from the Le Mans–winning D-Type, the E-Type looked less like a conventional production car and more like a racing prototype that had somehow wandered onto the street. Enzo Ferrari himself is often credited with calling it “the most beautiful car ever made.” Whether the quote is perfectly authentic hardly matters at this point — the sentiment certainly is.
Underneath that breathtaking bodywork the E-Type was not merely a styling exercise but a serious performance machine. The earliest Series I cars (1961–1967) were powered by Jaguar’s proven 3.8-liter double overhead cam inline six, an engine that had already earned its reputation in the XK120, XK140, and XK150 sports cars, and had won LeMans 5 times in the C-Type and D-Type racers. In the E-Type form it produced 265 horsepower, breathing through triple SU carburetors and sending power to the rear wheels through a Moss four-speed manual gearbox. The engineering of the chassis was equally advanced for the era. The car featured four-wheel disc brakes, rack-and-pinion steering, and an independent rear suspension mounted in a self-contained subframe — technology that was closer to racing practice than to most road cars of the early 1960s.
Coupe or roadster: both are irresistible, so what’s your pleasure?
The result was a machine capable of extraordinary performance for its time. Contemporary road tests recorded 0–60 mph times in roughly seven seconds and a top speed approaching 150 miles per hour, numbers that placed the Jaguar firmly in exotic territory. Yet unlike the Ferraris and Maseratis of the period, the E-Type was priced within reach of ordinary sports car buyers. Jaguar had created something remarkable: a car with the performance and beauty of an Italian exotic, sold at a price that undercut nearly all of its rivals.
Just as important as the mechanical specifications was the car’s cultural impact. The E-Type arrived at a moment when the world was embracing modern design, jet-age optimism, and technological progress. Its long hood, low stance, and aerodynamic curves captured the spirit of the early 1960s perfectly. The car quickly became an icon of the era, appearing in magazines, films, and the driveways of celebrities on both sides of the Atlantic. Even people with little interest in automobiles recognized the silhouette instantly.
Just a handful of the early release’s countless celebrity owners: L-R: George Harrison, Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland, Tony Curtis
Jaguar upped the ante in 1964 with the introduction of the 4.2-liter engine, with increased torque, followed closely by a better in-house designed full-synchro 4-speed transmission for improved drivability. While later Series II versions added comfort features and emissions changes for the American market, for many enthusiasts the earliest Series I cars remain the purest expression of the concept — light, fast, and breathtakingly elegant.
If you think the street version of the E-Type is good, the lightweight racing version is nee-plus-ULTRA!
For a car this famous you might expect the toy industry to have produced dozens of perfect miniature replicas. In reality the E-Type has proven surprisingly difficult to capture in small scale, and the history of its die-cast and slot-car versions reads like a long experiment in trying — and often failing — to get the proportions right.
Die-Cast Attempts
The superb Hot Wheels Premium issue of the racing version of the hardtop roadster, released in the 21st century
Mint & Boxed, the Matchbox version is almost as old as the real thing; this version shown here is the one with the rare gray tires
The E-Type has been rendered so many times at scale by so many companies that I can’t possibly mention them all, so to keep things constrained, I’m focusing only on 1:64 and HO for this article. Among the earliest miniature E-Types was the Matchbox coupe, introduced by Lesney in 1962 as No. 32 in the regular 1–75 series. Despite its small size and toy-like simplicity, the Matchbox casting captured the essential proportions of the car surprisingly well and remains one of the more successful small-scale interpretations. It was only ever released in one color, but it was a good one: a deep candy red with a lustre achieved by spaying the car twice, first with a metallic gold base coat and then again with a translucent deep red. The end result did justice to the real thing!
ABOVE LEFT: Schuco model that sits in its original package on my toy room shelf is a good model, although smaller than 1:64 ABOVE RIGHT: the awful Siku rendering was a rare misfire for this German manufacturer of 1:64 who usually got things right.
European manufacturers followed suit. Schuco produced a convincing version, and the German maker Siku also issued an E-Type in its own small-scale die-cast line, although sadly they chose to render the car in the ungainly 2+2 format rather than the sleek 2-seater. The result was even less pleasing than the real car.
Another effort worth mentioning is the Husky model (later Corgi Jr) but again, making it in 2+2 form; why so many toy makers chose to use the ugly version of the car as the basis for their models is mystifying to me.
After that, the field became considerably more uneven.
ABOVE LEFT: The Playart version of the E-Type wasn’t so bad, but the the Yatming version (RIGHT) is surely one of the worst renderings of this car committed to metal. And here again: both these are models of the 2+2 coupe
French die-casters Majorette gave the world the E-Type in its worst form, the Series III V-12 2+2 coupe
During the 1970s Hong Kong die-cast boom, numerous companies attempted their own Jaguar E-Types. Playart produced a version that is reasonably serviceable, if a bit heavy in its proportions. Yat Ming, on the other hand, produced one of the more unfortunate interpretations of the design — a casting so distorted that the graceful lines of the real car are barely recognizable.
From your humble blogger’s childhood collection: a pair of Zylmex E-Type roadsters modified by me: on the left, fitted with early Matchbox Superfast wheels and painted gold with interior in black: on the right, another fitted with Tomica gold-tone 4-spoke wheels and painted metallic maroon. Both cars were originally bright blue with yellow stripes.
Other manufacturers that tried their hand at the E-Type over the years include Johnny Lightning, Majorette, Tootsietoy, and Zee Toys (Zylmex), along with several lesser-known Hong Kong brands whose efforts ranged from passable to downright tragic.
From my collection: this battered and hand-repainted 1:87 Efsi roadster just barely survived my childhood; car was originally bright green
The Dutch company Efsi even produced a small HO-scale Jaguar E-Type roadster in roughly 1:87 scale during the early 1970s, intended primarily as scenery for model railroad layouts rather than as a toy car.
A mid-1990s reproduction of the original Johnny Lightning E-Type coupe; not a bad toy, but not a good model
Curiously, one of the biggest names in die-cast toys avoided the E-Type entirely during its classic era. Mattel’s Hot Wheels line, launched in 1968, produced Ferraris, Mercedes, Corvettes, and countless other sports cars during the famous Redline years — yet somehow never included an E-Type. Only in recent years did Hot Wheels finally correct the omission with a premium 1:64 casting, which ironically turned out to be one of the best small-scale representations of the car.
A Hot Wheels “Car Culture” Premium issue receiving its racing decals in the DC paddock
Now in the modern era, Matchbox has returned to do a second take on the E-Type and this time did an even better job: their excellent 21st century rendering has been released in countless colors and styles, but every proportion looks right to the eye
Above: the excellent Mattel-era Matchbox rendering of the Series I coupe has now been made in countless colors, and I have over a dozen of them, with several displayed throughout the diorama at Drag City!
And Johnny Lightning-or at least the NAME Johnny Lightning, under the umbella of Playing Mantis-has also returned to do an E-Type Redux, and their excellent modern rendition bears nothing in common with the mediocre original; while Hot Wheels did the aluminum racing hardtop roadster and Matchbox did the hatchback coupe, JL did the open roadster, and they did it well! Its proportions might not be as spot-on as the other 2 major brands, but its close, and the opening hood and the highly detailed engine underneath makes up for a lot! 2 of these appear prominently on the Drag City diorama.
2 examples of the modern Johnny Lightning roadster on the DC diomara
And FINALLY: never to be outdone these days, Mattel issues a Redline Club version of the E-Type coupe that isn’t necessarily better in terms of proportion than the Matchbox, but is crazy in its intricate detail! A candy red version of this was one of my 2025 RLC purchases, and today it sits prominently in front of the Outlaw Garage next door to the spectator entrance to Drag City Raceway!
The 2025 RLC release at the Outlaw Garage
Slot Cars: Everyone Takes a Shot
The E-Type also appeared in a surprising number of small-scale slot car systems during the 1960s.
The best-known example for American collectors is the Aurora Jaguar XKE, introduced in the early 1963–1964 Aurora Model Motoring line as part of the original Thunderjet sports-car series. Aurora produced the body in several colors over the years, including gray, black, slate blue, and metallic variations, and it remains one of the recognizable classics of HO slot racing.
Aurora was hardly alone in deciding the Jaguar belonged on a slot track.
Other slot systems that produced E-Types included:
Atlas HO Slot Cars, introduced in the early-1960s and derived from Japanese Marusan tooling
Lionel HO Slot Cars, which produced a distinctive turquoise hardtop-roadster XKE during the early 1960s
Faller AMS, the German HO slot system launched in 1963, which also offered an E-Type coupe, although it was tragically wrong at the front end.
Tri-ang Minic Motorways, the British electric roadway system introduced in 1963, which included a Jaguar E-Type roadster with a hardtop among its early vehicle offerings
Marx HO Slot Cars, whose short-lived slot sets in the mid-1960s also featured a Jaguar E-Type body, although the rendering is so awful its difficult to tell for sure what it is!
By the middle of the decade it seemed that nearly every slot-car manufacturer had decided the E-Type needed to be part of their catalog. Unfortunately, the same proportional challenges that plagued the die-cast world showed up here as well…in spades!
Even the Aurora Thunderjet body — probably the most familiar example to American collectors — never quite captured the delicate curves of the real car. The wheel arches in particular are squared-off at the top compared to the flowing openings of the real car, giving the model a strange and somewhat caricatured look.
A Beautiful Car That Defies Miniaturization
The strange truth about the E-Type is that it may be one of the most beautiful automobiles ever built — and one of the most difficult shapes in automotive history to reproduce in miniature. In die-cast: Matchbox tried. Schuco tried. Playart, Yat Ming, Efsi, Majorette, and Johnny Lightning, all tried.
For our slot-world: Aurora tried. Atlas tried. Lionel, Marx, Faller, and Tri-ang Minic all tried. None of them really got it right. Now, it is true that both Scalextric and Ninco have done some superb E-type slotties in 1:36 scale-these are absolutely beautiful, but that scale is outside the scope of this blog. I did obtain a few resin castings based on the original Matchbox #32 a few years ago, but although they showed some promise, they proved very fragile, and retired from the racing fleet after very short tenures with irreparable crash damage.
A series of Matchbox-based resin E-Type coupes, the introduction of which can be read in about in some of this blog’s earliest posts from 2021. All of these have been retired from the fleet due to shattered screw posts.
Fixing the Jaguar
Fortunately, slot racers are nothing if not practical.
THE GANG’S ALL HERE!
In the Drag City sports-car fleet, every Aurora Jaguar E-Type body has been modified with radiused wheel arches. The change originally began as a mechanical necessity — modern racing wheels and chassis combinations require more clearance than Aurora’s original design allowed. But the modification also has an aesthetic benefit: once the arches are rounded out and the stance slightly lowered, the cars suddenly look much closer to the graceful proportions of the real E-Type.
The Atlas rendering of the E-Type coupe: still not right, but not all that bad compared to most of the others!
Today the Drag City grid fields 6 Jaguar E-Types, each derived from the classic Aurora body and each slightly modified for racing duty.
Ironically, one of the best-proportioned miniature E-Types ever produced may not be the Aurora version at all but the Atlas HO Jaguar, whose proportions are surprisingly close to the real car compared with most other small-scale attempts.
A Legacy of Miniature Sculpture:
As the recent Hot Wheels and Johnny Lighting versions prove, more than sixty years later, the miniature world finally captured the delicate proportions that made the real car such a sensation in 1961. But even when the proportions are slightly off, even when the wheel arches need a little help from a racer’s file, the magic of the original design still shines through.
And as for those Aurora originals? I have one of the 3 rare ones: the gray one. I’m wrangling for a black one. Slate blue? Probably not worth it, only if I find a bargain. Yet, even if the group of 6 set up for Ultra-G chassis aren’t “rare,” they look great! Each is shod with RRR or Vincent wheels, all but one run on low-profile tires, and all are wicked fast, just like the real thing. Sure, the T-Jet wasn’t one of the better models of the E-Type, but there are plenty of worse ones! After all, when the starting point is one of the coolest cars ever designed, even a flawed miniature still has a lot going for it!
An “honorable mention” from 1:43: the excellent Corgi Series I roadster, shown in the original dark metallic gray with disc wheels, and the later chromed version with wire wheels
Some might say that this post should have come with an “Out of the Slot” heading. There’s an argument to be made for that, but I decided not to do so because-while not related to slot cars-this post is related directly to the environment of my basement toy room, where Drag City Raceway resides. Thus, it qualifies-in my mind at least-as an update on the process of building the environment around the track.
The previous arrangement
One of the projects I’ve been delaying in my basement is moving some things around to make space for a potential expansion of the diorama. This is something I’ve described multiple times, particularly in this post, where I actually drew a map of the plan. It wasn’t too long ago that I was able to move my dad’s old easy chair up to my office upstairs, all part of the effects of The Garage Betrayal. That cleared out that corner, but left my vintage record player still sitting awkwardly on a small end table crossed by a wire shelf.
There is an area in my basement across from the downstairs bathroom and the “Oddly Angled Room” which has never been useful because if it’s size and shape. I wanted to utilize this space for the record player, but I knew that in order to do so, I would have to have a very specific piece of furniture: something that was of reduced depth to fit without eating up all the floor space outside the bathroom, but wide enough to hold the equipment I want it to contain. Ideally, it would be a cabinet with some storage space for records. It seemed like the ideal item for this purpose was what is commonly called a “sideboard” or a “buffet.” Well, this weekend, I went looking for one…and I scored!
Signs of Colorado’s agrarian past can still be found in Longmont
All this is thanks again to my buddy Patrick, who-unlike your HB-has a FaceCrook account, and can access FB Marketplace, which is a better alternative to the now useless Craigslist. He found several candidates on a Saturday morning, but everyone that we contacted said that we wouldn’t be able to come and look at any of the cabinets until Monday. Obviously, that doesn’t work for someone who works on Monday. Fortunately, late that afternoon, a new listing popped up in a town called Longmont, about an hour’s drive north; a town I am familiar with and once spent a good amount of time in, but haven’t been to in many years.
Patrick and I in Ye Olde Chevy Trucke, making our way out of the city.
A few well-placed text messages and a couple of phone calls later, we tossed the dolly and a pair of ratchet straps into the truck and headed up the highway to the old part of Longmont, where we met a soon to be X-patriot selling all her furniture for a planned move overseas. The cabinet was a piece that appears to date from the 1940’s or ‘50s, so post-art deco, but in excellent condition, and looked to be the perfect size and shape for what I needed! I paid the asking price in cash and we loaded it into the truck without much difficulty, thanks again to Patrick’s exemplary skills.
Another 45 minutes to drive back and unload, and we confirmed that I was right: it was the perfect size and shape!
There is no power in this corner of the basement, and we had already explored the possibility of installing an outlet in the wall and determined that due to the structure of the house, doing so was going to present great difficulties, so we figured out a way to run a cord from the AC plug around the corner into a groove on the tile floor to get electricity for the record player and a little bit of additional lighting for the corner (more on that in a moment).
This was an acceptable solution, but it did require a little bit of work to the floor, so we made a quick evening trip to the local Home Depot to pick up a couple of additional supplies, including a small throw rug, which is of a color and style that is aesthetically pleasing, and matches the mood of the area fine, just fine! Once everything was in place, I was so pleased with how it turned out that I decided to spend the rest of the night diving into a long sealed box hidden deep within the bowels of “the Oddly Angled Room!”
The trip to Home Depo also resulted in a new drawer pull: this Celtic knotwork-stye matches the little “angel” pulls of the doors on either side much better than the plain pine knob that was in place when I bought it.
21 years in storage
The contents of this box had not seen the light of day since 2005, when they were packed up and shipped back to Colorado after my brief and failed experiment in Virginia in 2004. Contained within were 2 antique plastic twist-lock containers made for 45 RPM records…both packed to capacity with singles ranging from the late 1950s to the early 90s; country, country rock, garage rock, psychedelia, New Wave, classic rock, all here: records from various periods of my distant past, some going back to my early days in CO, others going all the way back to my pre-teen years in CA…and none of which I had laid eyes on since leaving the East Coast all those years ago!
Though it is just a garden-variety US single pressing, I was thrilled to put my hands on this gem from my childhood for the first time in decades! I can still remember buying this single at Licorice Pizza in Upland!
As you can imagine, there’s a lot of cleaning to be done, especially since some of these records are very worse for wear. I wouldn’t play most of these on my top-notch stereo system upstairs, but records like these are exactly what this old Singer phonograph is for, so I had myself a little record party late into the night, which continued well into Sunday, while sitting at the track running a qualifying round for the upcoming racing season with music on the auto-changer behind me!
If you don’t look too hard you won’t see the cord!
Results so pleasing I could almost dance…kinda…
And God Said: Let There Be (a little more) Light
As a post script, I felt that this newly rejuvenated corner of the basement needed a little bit more lighting, so I took some advice from a friend and hit Etsy, where I ordered one of those cool glass Turkish lamps that are such a hot thing nowadays. I choose a hanging pendant-style with a simple cane handle shape at the top and opted for a bulb style the website amusingly referred to as “Vhite Blue.”
I got that lamp for a very good price, and I think it will suit this corner very well; it should provide not only some additional lighting, but will also cast some interesting patterns on the angled walls of this narrow area. I don’t have this piece yet, but I expect it to arrive in the next couple of weeks, with some assembly required, of course. I’ll be sure to update y’all on the results once this “mood piece” is in place!
A place for everything – the way life should be!
All in all, a productive and successful weekend that improves the dynamics and vibe of the area, and thus leads to more enjoyment at Drag City!
For years now, the way I’ve scored my races at Drag City has been brutally simple: line them up, run them head-to-head, and let the clock decide who lives and who goes back in the case. Single elimination. No appeals. No committee meetings. It’s clean, it’s dramatic, and it has given us some of the finest moments in this little corner of 1980s inland Southern California that exists mostly on plywood and imagination.
But time has a way of whispering in your ear.
After watching the same handful of front-runners pile up heat after heat — and realizing that my fastest cars are also the ones absorbing the most wear — I started to wonder if there might be a better way. Not softer. Not easier. Just smarter. A format that spreads the action around, gives every car a real shot at proving itself, and still builds toward a proper, blood-in-the-water final.
Enter something I’m tentatively calling SNAKE DRAW 32.
The idea is simple in spirit, even if it looks a little more elaborate on paper. Instead of throwing thirty-two cars into a straight ladder and letting the early rounds chew them up, the field is divided into eight balanced heats of four cars each. Every car runs three times. Points are awarded. The strongest rise. The rest go home knowing they actually got to race, not just blink and disappear.
I’m not saying this is the new law of the land at Drag City. Not yet. But for the Spring ’87 Muscle Car tournament, I’m seriously considering giving the Snake Draw a chance to prove itself.
How it works (for 32 cars)
Split 32 into 8 groups of 4.
Each group runs a round-robin (3 races per car).
Points per matchup:
Win = 2, Loss = 0
Tie-breaker = total time across the 3 races
Advance:
Top 1 from each group → 8-car playoff (3 more races for finalists)
Or top 2 → 16-car playoff (4 more races for finalists)
Wear math:
Non-advancers: 3 races
Winner: 6–7 races depending on playoff size
Tracking effort: still easy, because groups of 4 are tiny and you can paste them as blocks.
THE STEPS, IN ORDER….
1) Assign the 32 cars into 8 groups of 4 (balanced “snake seeding”)
Assume cars are ranked 1 (fastest) to 32 (slowest). Use this grouping (it keeps each group balanced: one fast, one upper-mid, one lower-mid, one slow): Group A: 1, 16, 17, 32 Group B: 2, 15, 18, 31 Group C: 3, 14, 19, 30 Group D: 4, 13, 20, 29 Group E: 5, 12, 21, 28 Group F: 6, 11, 22, 27 Group G: 7, 10, 23, 26 Group H: 8, 9, 24, 25
Inside each group, label the cars: A1, A2, A3, A4 (same for B, C…H)
Example for Group A: A1 = seed 1 A2 = seed 16 A3 = seed 17 A4 = seed 32
2) The 6-race schedule for EACH group (round-robin) Run these six matchups in this exact order for every group: Group B is the same pattern, etc.
Result: each car runs 3 races, against the other three cars once.
3) Lane assignment that’s fair and automatic (no extra races)
To avoid one car always getting the “good lane,” just do this: In each matchup, the first car listed starts in Lane 1. The second car listed starts in Lane 2. Because of the schedule, each car ends up in Lane 1 about as often as Lane 2 over the 3 races.
4) Scoring (simple)
For each head-to-head: Win = 2 points Loss = 0 points (Optional) DNF = 0 points and record the time as blank Rank within the group by: Total points Total time across the 3 races (lower is better) Fastest single run (if you need a final tie-break)
Advance either: Top 1 from each group → 8-car playoff or Top 2 from each group → 16-car playoff
5) “Master Run List” (keeps it fun and spreads wear/heat) Total = 48 races to complete the group stage (8 groups × 6 races).
If Snake Draw 32 works the way I think it might, it won’t replace the old way out of sentimentality or novelty — it’ll earn its place the same way any car earns a reputation at Drag City: by surviving the laps. This isn’t about softening the edges or manufacturing parity. It’s about balance. About giving every machine three honest shots under the lights before the knives come out in the playoffs. If the format proves fair, exciting, and worthy of the name, it stays. If not, we go back to the ladder and nobody speaks of this again. That’s racing.
