Weird Diecast Toy Car Bribes Continue To Flood The LeMons Supreme Court
As Chief Justice of the 24 Hours of LeMons Supreme Court, I receive many gifts from racers wishing to establish a foundation of mutual respect and understanding during the period in which I inspect the cars for possible cheating. The traditional judicial bribe tends to be a jug of top-shelf booze, but my drinking hasn’t kept pace with the intake of bottles of Stranahan’s bourbon and Zaya rum, and so I’ve been encouraging teams to bring weird diecast toy cars to lubricate the gears of justice. After the last round of LeMons Supreme Court diecast toy car bribes, I thought it would be hard to top the Leyland P76 and Moskvich 402, but the racers at the ’11 Southern Discomfort and the ’11 Gator-O-Rama have done so with the current crop of diecasts.
The Simca Aronde diorama looks nice on the surface, but it’s really the David Lynch movie of diecast car dioramas. When you look closely, the hitchhiker appears to be a cross between Frieda Kahlo and Sterling Hayden. The internal organs of the hapless Aronde driver will soon be pickling in fermaldihyde-filled jars in a shack off the main highway. Obviously, I love this judicial bribe.
This 1:18 scale ’66 Oldsmobile Toronado isn’t quite awesomely terrible enough for prime desk space in my office, but a 425-cubic-inch engine driving the front wheels via chains means I’ll find a spot for it.
This 1:40 scale Nissan Prairie was a gift from the team that ran a Prairie (badged as a Nissan Stanza Wagon in North America) in the Southern Discomfort race. If not for the performance of the NSF Racing ’62 Plymouth Fury, the Stanza Wagon would have taken the Index of Effluency award at that race.
Sure, it’s got some panel-gap issues, but check out the sliding side doors!
The real prize of this bunch-o-bribes has to be the 1962 Citroën HY van, which was held back as a reserve bribe by a team that waited until I really started sweating them over the dubious bookkeeping behind their car’s tasty aftermarket suspension parts. It’s in oddball 1:21 scale, which seems very French.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Ah, but has anyone ever tried to bribe you with a CT&T E-Zone? I doubt you have diecast models of obscure Korean EV makers.
thanks Murilee!