factoid # 1: some of us slot car nuts are always dabbling with resin casts of diecast cars that were never made as slot cars, adapting the lightweight resin bodies to the motorized slot car chassis. factoid #2: in the ‘60s, a German company called Faller made a Cadillac deVille convertible slot car. i have always wanted one, but they go for big bucks on Fleabay, and i have never ponied up the cash for one.
some of you may recognize this resin cast as a copy of a Johnny Lightning hearse:
well, i was fortunate enough to acquire a few of these hearse bodies from a friend in the slot car hobby. like the Man in Black himself, i devised a plan to build my own Cadillac.
first i lopped off the roof:
then i took a section out of the middle and matched the wheelbase of the slot car chassis:
i ended up using the windshield from the same hearse diecast that i had previously taken apart in an ill-fated attempt to do the resin cast myself. the interior is sliced from a plastic-bodied Johnny Lightning Thunderjets Mustang. (side note: for a while, about 10 years ago, Johnny Lightning sold toy pullback cars in the diecast aisle whose detachable bodies were made to fit right on Aurora or AFX slot cars from the ‘60s and ‘70s.) a section of the original hearse roof served as the trunk lid.
i dabbled with the idea of a hardtop, but the roofline of the top i had available was all wrong.
after paint and finishing, i was pretty happy with the finished product.
