Time for some track shakedown for the Ford X-1.
Uh oh...
Big uh oh...
The car lost brake and went off the track at over 130mph, as it skipped on the dirt the large front mounted fins created lift and made the car go airborne. The car slammed the upper part of the wood barrier with the front extended fuel tank punctured and exploded in mid-air. The car did a somersault before landing right side up with its right rear side dig into the dirt.
Fire truck and track first responders arrived immediately to extract driver and spray water on the wreckage. Driver was taken to hospital, his condition is currently unknown.
The wreckage was pulled and temporarily stored at Michael’s garage before being flatbed to the scrapyard. The car is beyond restoration.
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The real X-1 never finished the races it entered, McLaren’s idea of making the car light with a new lightweight transmission made it fragile and unreliable. In the end, McLaren threw in the towel and handed the project back to Shelby, the ones that created the original and successful GT40s which a new version of the X-1 was born.
Interesting fact: The Ford GT40, despite being a race car from the 60's, was actually crash tested.
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This custom, just like the first iteration of the X-1, a failure. After the left side door broke off last night making it the ninth time this cast crumbled while being handled, it was clear that this car was sending me a message. As disturbing as it sounds, I actually had more fun creating the crashed car than I was creating the non-wrecked version. In a way it can be considered as a custom on its own, Just not as pretty.
After calculating the time from disassembling to photographing, the total amount of time I spent on this project was a little over 3hrs. Which is a tiny amount of time on customizing a diecast, but on a poor quality car like this where the metal is weaker than most dinnerware, its plenty. If the cast in question was higher quality like say a MBX, I would spend days, even weeks and invest into a wider paint palette and decals to make sure I get the custom exactly right, because it would empower me and reward me to be more attentive to the project.
This was the opposite of rewarding, when I tried to be detail oriented, it just finds a new place to break apart which I then had to pause and mend it. However, there is a silver-lining to all this, like I mentioned at the beginning of this project. The benefit of using off-brand diecasts for customs is if they’re bad and got sick of them, just simply destroy it in a fashion that is most satisfying. When I destroyed this custom to make the crash scene, I felt no remorse, because I spent little to no money and didn’t sacrifice any diecasts to harvest parts specifically for this project, all were either recycled parts that came with the cast or something that I have laying around like the engine and used gift card.
So don’t feel bad about this car being destroyed. I’ll share some experimental customs I’ve done with off-brand casts in the past that have much better results some other time. Also, I would love to retry this custom in the future with a better representation of the GT40.
I’m very thankful to Vdubyajohn, for sending me this cast as RAOK to want me to cut loose a little and awake my inner child that was put to bed indefinitely at a very young age. The destroy everything side of me.
That marks the end of this series. Normal program with more decent diecasts will resume from now on. Cheers.