I was happy to discover recently that Target has temporarily put all their single pack Hot Wheels cars on sale for 79 cents. That's an 18 cent savings over their regular price, which is a pretty decent discount, especially considering that I was beginning to think Hot Wheels single packs were something that never went on sale. While it isn't enough of a discount to convince me to buy models that I've never found all that appealing, it is enough to make me reconsider cars that fell just shy of making my cut for one reason or another. Case in point: the Ford Mustang Funny Car (as pictured above). I don't particularly like funny cars. The reason for this goes way back to my days of racing toy cars with my brother. While at the store one day in 1978, I spotted the Army Funny Car, and it was love at first sight. I didn't bother to read the name of the car. I wouldn't have known what a funny car was even if I had.
Once home, I took it out of it's package and discovered that the body was loose. What the...? I showed it to my brother who quickly announced, "Oh! That's a funny car!"
"Yeah, I know. The body's loose..."
"No, no. It's a Funny Car. The outside is just a shell, and inside is the real car. It's a dragster."
Great. I had bought it based on what it looked like on the outside, only to discover that it was just a hollow shell -- a good lesson for life in general, but not for someone who only cared about what kind of numbers a car could put up on the track. A car needed to be solid in it's construction to roll well and negotiate curves and loops with any real speed. The Army Funny Car never did very well on any of those fronts and was, as a result, a fairly big disappointment to me. But now that I'm a collector, I had to admit, this Mustang Funny Car has style. Even the dragster within is an eye pleasing combination of gold atop an unpainted metal base. For 79 cents, heck, why not?
No comments:
Post a Comment