Dammit posted before I typed anything. Its a original dealer promotional car used by dealers to bring in customers. Generally the kids dragged mom and dad in to the dealership so they could take a ride and left mom and dad as fair game for the salesmen.
Let me finish posting here. The body is vacuum formed styrene plastic and needless to say they could not take the abuse that the kids gave them. The bodies generally broke up and the frame was run until it died and the rest was tossed. So to find one on this condition today is very rare. The same company that made these also made a 1958 version and even a Edsel version in 58 The Thunderbirds that were made by the Powercar company of Mystic CT had fiberglass bodies and faired much better. I own the original factory mold for the Tbird bodies Here is an orignal ad from the company that made them in 57
That's very cool. I had a similar electric '63 Corvette roadster. Sold it to my brother-in-law when he went through his Vette phase.
The Corvette was probably a Yardman? Do you have any pictures of it that I could add to my website? Here is one more original picture of the Ford from a front cover of a record album the bodies were not painted on these since the plastic was white all the way through. Of course over the years they yellowed and the plastic is pretty darned hard to fix. I would like to pull a mold from this body and make a fiberglass replacement body instead.
cool find i see the friction cars on ebay from time to time they suffered from body distortion also rare to find one thats straight.
Sorry no photos but I think the brand was Toycraft. It was about 6 feet long and weighed a couple hundred pounds. I'll see if my brother-in-law has any photos.
Hey, I found of of these. It's a 59 Plymouth. It's all there except the trunklid. What are these worth? Do you know of anyone I can contact about it's value?
You found one of these? probably not as good as shape? the trunk lids were only cut out on the gas powered units and they had another trunk lid that overlayed the area. if yours is an electric powered unit then someone cut the trunk area out along the recessed definition lines at some point in the past. Getting a trunk lid made will not be easy. But it still has value if for nothing else that the original frame to use on another body? Do you still have the original frame? I own the website that has a lot of information on these cars and i make a lot of parts for restoration and recreation. http://www.jrcentral.com is my website. If you can post images of your car I can tell you if it was an original gas powered or not? and I can give you lots of other information. You might want to also check out my youtube page for videos of Junior cars. http://www.youtube.com/user/roadkillontheweb