[ParkRNDL]

5 or 6 years ago, when I made the yard sale find of old Atlas and Tjet stuff that got me BACK into slots, there were TWO Vibe bodies in the box--a white Corvette hardtop with a tan roof and a green Jag with a black roof. I sold the white Vette at the first show I went to (apparently it's a rare color combo not listed in Bob Beers' book... I bought an original '67 Galaxie, an original Firebird, and an original Cougar for what I got for the Corvette). I kept the Jag, but I had no chassis for it for a long time. Then a year or two ago I bought a box of junk diecast at a local estate auction, and there was ONE slot car in it--a Vibe Ford pickup with (sorta) running chassis. I put a Tjet chassis with narrowed rear wheels under the pickup, and put the Vibe chassis under the Jag... it seemed fitting that an old Jag would be cranky and temperamental...

--rick

 

[ParkRNDL]

Thanks for post this. It is facinating I have never seen these.

How long were these on the market before the pancakes?

Aurora sold them from 1960 to 1962. Then Tjets came out for 1963.

As an added history note, the same design was sold in England under the Playcraft name in 1959, but they never took off, supposedly because Scalextric had cornered the slot car market with larger-scale cars. Aurora liked the idea and bought the rights to it, planning to market it as a scenery accessory for a train set... but at the first toy industry trade show where they showed it off, the executives' kids had too much fun racing them and causing catastrophic train-crossing wrecks. Thus was the "race set" born...

and on another note, the Jag and Mercedes bodies came to Aurora from Playcraft, but there were two other Playcraft bodies that never made it to Aurora... a '58 Impala and a Ford flatbed truck (or lorry, as the British called it). They were apparently too complicated to manufacture easily... the Impala was a two-tone made of something like 9 separate pieces of plastic. They occasionally turn up on Fleabay. I've seen the Impala fetch $800...

--rick