Who Was Richard Carroll?

[Casey]

He must've been pretty good 'cuz he got his own line of tires!:

[clavender17]

Man i could use a set of them !!

[John Pol]

He built some real wild custom he did use to do the show circiut with his real cars. And he also build models he had alot of wild ideas.

John Pol

[Elliot949]

he was a builder in the sixties and seventies... He scratch built eveerything... He was WAY ahead of his time... I am not sure where you got those tires but they are very rare and worth alot of money especially in that condition... I have seen them sell for as little as 40.00 and as high as 110.00...

[TooOld]

I remember seeing a lot of Richard Carroll builds on the cover and in Car Model Magazine in the late 60's and early 70's . He always made custom "working" suspensions and cast his own tires . They were pretty amazing stuff ! The picture on that card is one of them , if you look close you can see how detailed the suspension is .

[Nitro Neil]

Here is a cover shot of one of Richard Carroll's model on Car Model Magazine from 1970. Richard wrote a number of articles for Car Model mag back in the day. He was scratchbuilding with brass and casting his one parts long before most of us were even thinking about it. He eventually moved away from using plastic completely and lost interest in the model car hobby.

He lived in Massachusetts and the MassCar Model Club tried to get him to display at our shows but he wasn't interested in participating at all. Kinda sad really - he was a major force in the hobby in the early days but most builders have never even heard of him.

I have a set of his tires. I keep thinking I should sell them because I really don't have any idea what I would do with them, but I can't bring myself to actually put them up for sale.

Here is a link to the Car Model mag with an article from him on building a dragster style front end out of brass.

http://www.modelencyclopedia.com/magazines.php?MagId=127

Edited January 28, 2013 by Nitro Neil

[Elliot949]

Here is a cover shot of one of Richard Carroll's model on Car Model Magazine from 1970. Wrote a number of articles for Car Model mag back in the day. He was scratchbuilding with brass and casting his one parts long before most of use were even thinking about. He eventually moved away from using plastic completely and lost interest in the model car hobby.

He lived in Massachusetts and the MassCar Model Club tried to get him to display at our shows but he wasn't interested in participating at all. Kinda sad really - he was a major force in the hobby in the early days but most builders have never even heard of him.

I have a set of his tires. I keep thinking I should sell them because I really don't have any idea what I would do with them, but I can't bring myself to actually put them up for sale.

Here is a link to the Car Model mag with an article from him on building a dragster style front end out of brass.

http://www.modelencyclopedia.com/magazines.php?MagId=127

That is sooo kewl on several levels... I have heard that Richard Carroll always was a little stand offish... Really didn't want anything to do with the people in the hobby... He would have been what you would think of today as a computer geek, a very techy type guy... I have never meant him but that is what I have heard... I have also heard that he still builds but nobody will ever see his stuff...

[Nitro Neil]

Here is another issue of Car Model mag with one of Richard's wild models on the cover. http://www.modelencyclopedia.com/magazines.php?MagId=137

[Nitro Neil]

That is sooo kewl on several levels... I have heard that Richard Carroll always was a little stand offish... Really didn't want anything to do with the people in the hobby... He would have been what you would think of today as a computer geek, a very techy type guy... I have never meant him but that is what I have heard... I have also heard that he still builds but nobody will ever see his stuff...

Yeah, he is kinda of like the J.D. Salinger of the model car hobby.

Edited January 28, 2013 by Nitro Neil

[Elliot949]

I found this link also on some of his stuff... http://s92.beta.photobucket.com/user/Finktim/library/Models%20by%20Richard%20Carroll/#/user/Finktim/library/Models%20by%20Richard%20Carroll?&_suid=1359382489771005974649471431076

[Dave Van]

A while back over at Dave's Showrod BB one of the guys tracked him down and contacted him. IIRC he is not into model cars any longer. He was asked if he had the models still and he did.....stored in a box in the attic!! He was and still is a bit of a Lone Wolf. I have seen this personality in my other hobbies of 1/1 Pony cars and model railroading. Guys come into the hobby, do things no has done before, go to the top of the hobby and then stop totally and move on....not having any 'love' for the hobby they conquered. I do wish if he has no use for the models he'd donate them to the model car museum or some other place they could be seen and preserved. I think most of them are still ground breaking.

[Bartster]

l remember a scratch build in a magazine in the early '70s, the mag could have been older. It had those tires on it & was a Model T type of car with a very low, almost lndy car looking nose. It almost had to be rear engined, but l can't remember specifics about that. My guess is it must've been Richard Carroll ? That article/build inspired me to branch out & ty new things. I cut the sidewalls off of 4 NASCAR tires & tried to glue them together. I ended up using some kind of black goop from the garage that never dried, lol ! I "deepened" rims for them using inner rims glued to Cragar SS rims. The whole set up looked like dookie, but l was so proud !

Bart

[jas1957]

I don't know about the stand offish part, he was a guest at the at the Toledo NNL Nationals maybe 10-12 years ago. Brought a bunch of his old builds & several sets of wheels we gave away as door prizes. I didn't really talk to him but he seemed friendly enough.

[Elliot949]

Well now I have heard a different side... I don't know the man but I would love to meet him, sit and talk with him and look at those models that I drooled over when I was like 14 years old...

[Dave Van]

Anyone know what year he was at Toledo????? I've only missed a few of them.....but do not remember him coming!!!!!

[cobraman]

2.39 for that set of cool tires ? Those were the days huh ?

[Casey]

2.39 for that set of cool tires ? Those were the days huh ?

"$2.39 in 1971 had the same buying power as $13.55 in 2012."

'bout the same as a set of the Round two parts packs tires.

Thanks for the link to those scanned article pages, Dan. It sounds like Richard was quite tech savvy, and a lathe was mentioned in the article, so he was clearly into making things on his own, and making them true-to-scale.

I still can't figure out what the forward half of the vehicle pulling the chopper on the trailer is supposed to be, but maybe that's the point. Whatever it is, there's some serious imagination, creativity, and a ton of skill put into his builds.

[Elliot949]

"$2.39 in 1971 had the same buying power as $13.55 in 2012."

'bout the same as a set of the Round two parts packs tires.

Thanks for the link to those scanned article pages, Dan. It sounds like Richard was quite tech savvy, and a lathe was mentioned in the article, so he was clearly into making things on his own, and making them true-to-scale.

I still can't figure out what the forward half of the vehicle pulling the chopper on the trailer is supposed to be, but maybe that's the point. Whatever it is, there's some serious imagination, creativity, and a ton of skill put into his builds.

Good luck trying to find a set of these for 6 times the 2012 price... LOL

[Dave Van]

Someone repro'd the tires in resin....I got 3 sets of them....but yet to use them. I want to build a Carroll tribute model some day.

[eferrari]

It was the Fall of 1971 and instead of doing my homework in eight grade I was looking over some model car magazines that I obtained

for chores around the house. In the summer after my brother and I would do work around the house, I would hit the basement---and my older brother, before he enlisted in the Marines, was working on his Chevy 2 , then '63 Impala. It was in these magazines I met Richard Carroll. What

an amazing, wonderfully-l talented builder. I would watch Richard Carroll win trophy after trophy from coast-to-coast. The following year I tried my hand working on his rear suspension blue-print. Although not nearly as symmetrical, and maybe 1% of Richard Carrol's work, it was a wonderful time to watch this man produce, and share some of his work with fellow builders. I still have the suspension that I provided a pik.

Thanks.

[crazyjim]

I was talking with a fellow at last year's MAGS show in Tampa who said he was Richard Carroll. Very interesting guy.

[Elliot949]

It was the Fall of 1971 and instead of doing my homework in eight grade I was looking over some model car magazines that I obtained

for chores around the house. In the summer after my brother and I would do work around the house, I would hit the basement---and my older brother, before he enlisted in the Marines, was working on his Chevy 2 , then '63 Impala. It was in these magazines I met Richard Carroll. What

an amazing, wonderfully-l talented builder. I would watch Richard Carroll win trophy after trophy from coast-to-coast. The following year I tried my hand working on his rear suspension blue-print. Although not nearly as symmetrical, and maybe 1% of Richard Carrol's work, it was a wonderful time to watch this man produce, and share some of his work with fellow builders. I still have the suspension that I provided a pik.

Thanks.

Nice... Glad to see some of this old build stuff trying to do his work...

[Dave Van]

Some of his builds.........cool stuff......

[Elliot949]

That Stuff is SOOOOO cool... If you will he did a "Deora" before the Deora was done and his is so much more interesting...

Edited February 19, 2013 by Elliot949

[Casey]

That Stuff is SOOOOO cool... If you will he did a "Deora" before the Deora was done and his is so much more interesting...

I don't know which came first, but it bears quite a resemblance to Roth's Megacylcle from 1967: