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Ivo's Showboat, Thompson's Challenger 1 why not The Summers Brother's Goldenrod ?


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Name recognition would be my guess. TV Tommy had star power, Mickey was well known, and the Summer Brothers....Dick and Tommy was it? :D;) Maybe it was because both Ivo and M/T build many cars, and Ivo's were very eye-catching, while M/T's were very cutting edge, so together in the Revell catalog they worked.

I truly believe LSR car are a tough sell, and other than M/T's two Revell kits, there have been very few. The four Hawk kits and not a whole lot else. It's not a spectator friendly sport, the main race course is on the outskirts of a salt basin in Utah, and the drivers are mostly unknown to the average race fan/kit buyer.

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There used to be a resin 1/25 or 1/24 model of the Goldenrod but it was just the body (solid), the air intakes and little half circles for what could be seen of the wheels. I think it came with the decals as well.

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There used to be a resin 1/25 or 1/24 model of the Goldenrod but it was just the body (solid), the air intakes and little half circles for what could be seen of the wheels. I think it came with the decals as well.

Jimmy Flintstone makes a resin kit of the Golden Rod. I've never sighted one other than on the internet so I can't comment on it.

Edited by Roncla
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and the Summer Brothers....Dick and Tommy was it?

FYI - The Summers brothers , Bill and Bob , set the land speed record for naturally aspirated piston engines in November of 1965 with the Goldenrod . A speed of 409.277 mph that still stands today !

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FYI - The Summers brothers , Bill and Bob , set the land speed record for naturally aspirated piston engines in November of 1965 with the Goldenrod . A speed of 409.277 mph that still stands today !

I was just goofin', and despite the ingenuity put into the Goldenrod and being well known in hot rod circles, the Summers Brothers are unknown to most, and probably 99.99% of model kit buyers.

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I remember seeing the Goldenrod a few years back on a show car circuit tour . I looked pretty cool , but wow was it long.

And I agree, Unfortunately recreating the driveline / powertrain would be tough in 1/25th scale .

Edited by gtx6970
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Revell wouldn't have done it because they'd have looked at it as being "too similar" to the Challenger I. There are stories of a couple of Ed Roth cars that were rejected by Revell because they were "too similar" to existing kits. With LSR/Bonneville stuff, you're catering to a small group of fans. I'm surprised Revell even did the Challenger...

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Consider this: Revell introduced Challenger I in the fall of 1962, at a time when Mickey Thompson was at the top of his game with record-setting cars, and Revell was looking to truly break into the market for really decent model car kits. Same with Ivo's Showboat, although that came a couple of years later.

By the time Golden Rod hit the scene, the market for models of such cars had pretty much evaporated.

Art

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FYI - The Summers brothers , Bill and Bob , set the land speed record for naturally aspirated piston engines in November of 1965 with the Goldenrod . A speed of 409.277 mph that still stands today !

I've seen the resin based model on contest tables at least a couple of times.With the unusual shape, it catches your eye. The color is a factor as well. I makes for a really nice curbside.

To give due credit, Charles Nearburg took the record in 2010 at Mike Cook's Top Oil Shootout on the Bonneville Salt Flats. This with a single engine, rear drive streamliner. It's still amazing that the Goldenrod record stood for so many decades.

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Ivo and Thompson knew how to market their names and teaming up with a model company was a natural course. Both had multiple cars done by Revell and AMT. The Summers Bros. only had one memorable car and it would have been a bear to make as a kit. Only a curbside would have done it and that was not too popular at a time when Revell was making very intricate, flimsy and ill fitting, kits.

The resin marital aid by Jimmy Flintstone is not bad and with some sanding and painting, will make a nice shelf model.

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To give due credit, Charles Nearburg took the record in 2010 at Mike Cook's Top Oil Shootout on the Bonneville Salt Flats. This with a single engine, rear drive streamliner. It's still amazing that the Goldenrod record stood for so many decades.

Thanks for reminding me Alyn .

There are some really awesome "in - car" videos at the link below !

www.rett.org/speed/speed.html

Edited by TooOld
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1962 + a couple of years = 1965 ? Ivo kit 1965 Summers brothers break the LSR. Your time line Art :huh:

The Ivo Showboat kit is copyrighted 1963 per the original box and instruction sheet. Ads in CAR MODEL Magazine would seem to support this. The kit probably came out after Ivo quit driving it (he seldom drove it anyway).

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The long retired Goldenrod sat in front of the NHRA museum for quite a while before it was moved elsewhere. It looked a little rough, but it was neat to see. I think it had a full IRS and all wheel drive.

Here is a shot of the Flintstone resin cast of it. It would be fun ti try to fill a vacuum formed one with engines someday.

Really like to look of LSR cars.

http://www.fotki.com'>Hosted on Fotki

Scott

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  • 1 year later...

For those of you interested in the LSR streamliners, there is a nice article in the January Hot Rod magazine complete with photos of several (maybe 20?) current and past streamliners. It includes a small description of each car including notable achievments.

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From my perspective:

Challenger I was one of the first three "modern-era" 1/25 scale kits brought out in the fall of 1961 (the other two were their '56 Ford F-100, and Ed Roth's "Outlaw". Now, of course, Revell's people could only guesstimate the sales impact of each one, that early in the game, but from what I've ever seen, taht Ford pickup and The Outlaw far, FAR outsold Challenger 1 kit. As for TV-Tommy Ivo's "Showboat"--that one came out at a time when model car builders were hungry as all get-out for dragsters, ANY dragster--and it too sold pretty well.

If nothing else, I'd be pretty certain that seeing as almost no other Land Speed Record car was ever produced in kit form, at least not to the level of Challenger I--somebody someplace got the message that model kits of such cars, wild and neat as they might be, were seldom seen away from places such as the Bonneville Salt Flats, and in general received rather sparse notice in the press, both the news media and car enthusiast publications.

Art

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It's a shame, but I get that it's a niche not many folks are into. I'm currently working on the Challenger I and it's an awesome kit, although the instructions could be MUCH better! If they are the same as the original (I've got the Hot Rod Monster Machines issue with Ivo's dragster) then that could have been part of the problem!

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It's a shame, but I get that it's a niche not many folks are into. I'm currently working on the Challenger I and it's an awesome kit, although the instructions could be MUCH better! If they are the same as the original (I've got the Hot Rod Monster Machines issue with Ivo's dragster) then that could have been part of the problem!

It must have been both exciting and frightening (perhaps at the same time) to have been a product manager for a model company back in the 1950's and 60's--pick a winner and you were the company hero--but choose to do a kit subject that was a "turkey" and you'd likely become the "goat"--perhaps preparing a new resume' to attract your next employer.

I suspect that the truth really was, even as late as 1960, that nobody in that young plastic model kit industry really knew just what subject(s) would push the "hot button" with modelers--who back then were primarily kids, boys from the age of perhaps 9 or 10 to about 15 or 16 or thereabouts. Of course, model kits of any year's new cars were already known sellers, but what about other automotive subjects? Looking back, subjects beyond what Detroit was showing off every fall (along with a few model kits of older cars that were then "iconic" in the hot rodding and custom car world) must have been, at best, a ###### shoot--their ultimate popularity being about as predictable as a rolling of the dice or pitching pennies against a brick wall out on the sidewalk.

Even saying that, I'm pretty sure that many, if not most, new model car subjects sold at least enough to recoup their tooling cost, but there surely were some that simply "laid an egg"--I was told by AMT Corporation managers that their '53 Studebaker Commander Starliner and it's companion, the '63 Avanti sold very poorly when first released circa 1964, enough so that it was a good 10 years before either was reissued--and then again--that tooling sat on the shelves for another dozen or so years. But, alongside that, AMT's original 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air hardtop Trophy Series kit remained in continuous production from early 1962 through at least 1996--a run of 34 years and likely several million kits produced over that stretch of time.

Other kit subjects turned out to be wildly popular for a few years--based I suppose on the popularity of the real thing, only to fall by the wayside as fascination for the real thing faded away in the public's consciousness.

Art

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