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Inspiration comes from the darndest places sometimes. I won two Marx friction toy cars on Ebay for $6.00. Why did I even bid on them you ask? I saw potential that is not readily available in 1/24 scale. I went after the Cooper of the pair, to build a replica of the 1961 Cooper Indy car. This is a rather historic car, as it was the first rear engine car ever entered, and Jack Brabham drove it to a 9th place finish against the big motored cars of the time. Some say he could have placed better had he knew he would have to make a third pit stop for tires and fuel. he was babying the car to limit pit stops for a winning strategy Anyway, The following pics show what I have come up with so far. I need to print off the Kimberley decals to finish it up, and add one more coat of clear. I stripped this car of all its inner workings, and gutted the drivers pod to fit a new driver figure. (also an old Marx item) Removed 40 plus years of goo, and factory decals. I built a brass chassis to fit it, and added H&R wheels with $hotgun Daves rear urethanes. I made the artillery style wheels used on the cooper, by drilling holes in a set of steel wheel inserts out of an unknown model kit.I added some three bar knock offs from the parts bin, and the rest was pretty straight forward modeling. Its a fun little car, not overpowered, and runs quite well on the oval.


The other Marx car for comparison.


Hope you all enjoy this little car!

Bob

Another winner from Bob, the building machine!

Bob,

This is way cool! A Cooper was the second car I wanted to have entered in the HRW 100th year Indy proxy last year, but I only had time to submit the Lotus 38 because of a lengthy hospital stay. The inclusion of the Jack Brabham Cooper would have meant that most of the ground breaking Indy cars had been represented by our small field. I don't do 1/24th scale, but I love your builds.

Val

You've captured the essence of scratchbuilding -- creating milestone cars in miniature that are otherwise unavailable! Well done.

Incidentally, Brabham's Cooper was the cover car on the May/June 2015 issue of Vintage Motorsport magazine, with several pages inside devoted to detail photography and the car's history. Back issues still available at https://shop.vintagemotorsport.com/coll ... ues?page=2

Cheers,
Rick V.

Nice Cooper.
T60 judging from that hump over the engine.