A neighbor brought over a couple of rare finds from an estate sale he recently attended. These are very old, early Aurora Model Motoring cars. They were manufactured sometime in 1960 and were unopened in their original factory packaging.
A Mercedes Benz and a Ford Thunderbird.The original foam packaging inserts were way deteriorated and falling apart, and the plastic yellowing, but the cars were in remarkably good shape and both ran and took a bunch of laps on SR3.While they are similar to their younger sibling, the Aurora Thunderjet later manufactured in 1962, they are very different. I think these cars were called “Vibrators,” hence the strange drum and noise mechanism.
These cars wouldn’t have had much success in racing circles since they were pretty much throw-away once you wore out the pickup shoes or motor brushes. Cool little cars ran a lot like the original 1962 Aurora ThunderJet, probably a bit slower since the motor appeared to be a bit different, and they have some sort of noise-making mechanism, which probably reduces overall speed and power output. My neighbor plans to sell them on eBay soon and likely didn’t want me tearing into them, so I didn’t. I am curious how much different the motor box is from the later Thunderjet platform. If I ever see them again, I’ll ask him if I can remove the top plate to look closer. Maybe he’ll come across a couple more, and we could all do some IROC racing with them. They are so slow that you have to try hard to crash them.
Thanks for sharing, Dean!
