2021 What vintage cars/stuff have you bought

Hello Eduardo,
I am happy to help. Your car is almost all original, except that they never had any decals and the front tires were much smaller. Looks like someone put Eldon front tires on your car, or they could be from a Revell "Plastikar" RTR that they made for home racing in 1968-1969.

Revell released this car as one of their last effort to create revenues at a time when distributors were returning inventory for credit... not a good time.
This Cobra was summarily packed with shrink wrap over a piece of cheap corrugated cardboard base, this after Revell winning awards for the 1967 packaging of the "offset" kits and RTR line.

Revell introduced this plastic chassis in 1966 to create racing-set cars. It was first used for a set containing a Lotus 23 and a Porsche RS61 using the 1/24 scale bodies already existing. There were many different versions of the chassis that had tiny detail changes over a period of 2 years. The last ones were a similar design, but with the motor fitted in sidewinder mode. The same bodies were again used, while a narrower inline version was created for another racing set containing two 1966 Ferrari "Squalo" F1 cars, one red, one silver.

Here are some test shots of the chassis in various configurations:

One of the Lotus 23 in an unusual see through dual sided "card" in which two blister halves retain the car. Revell used this packaging for several 1/24 and 1/32 scale cars in 1968.

I hope that this helps.

The stripes were placed across the hood of the car for a single race, for location see the yellow Cobra driven by Allen Grant and crewed by George Lucas, yes the guy who gave you "Star Wars", the movie.

Once again, this Revell Cobra was only produced in a single batch (like most toys are and were) and was never supplied with decals. This is the bottom of the crude packaging to prove it (you have seen the top in the picture I previous posted here, # 12), and this is the only form of packing it came in. The Revell decals were available separately at your local raceway's counter in "books", like the Russkit decals, and also of course from the clear-plastic body kit in its FIRST version (over the white and blue card with two drivers molded in white or flesh-color plastic), but NOT in its ultimate version with the yellow tag, no decals, no drivers.

At last, someone remembering classic literature! You are my hero du jour.

The Indy car is the AJ Watson built Wynns Spl., driven by Don Branson, sister car to the 2nd-place finisher at the 1964 Indy-500. It is a Lancer body.
It was AJ Watson's first rear-engine car, that he copied on the 1963 Vollstedt-Offy that had nearly set a new lap record at Indy in testing and impressed lots of old timers seeing their "roadster" world collapsing as the rear engine cars showed clear superiority.

The Chaparral body is by Du-Bro and represents the 1964 "001" with a 350 Chevrolet based and far more torque-able V8, replacing the 3.5-liter Olds V8 previously used.
Du-Bro also made this body in 1/32 scale, and so did Auto Hobbies.

Don,
you bring a good point... until a few of us made younger enthusiasts aware of the historical value (in our little world) of genuine, and documented "pro racing" cars, chassis, motors and bits, itwas bargain galore on eBay. By 2010, all such bargains were gone, as the asking prices for such goodies went up about X 10.
Just for the fun of it, I remember picking the pair of these beautiful 1967 Terry Schmid cars for 38 bucks on eBay USA. No one cared!
Try this now, or after a few hundreds have read "Slot Car Dreams"...

Trisha,
yes and no. First, there were torsion-bar cars well before Ferdinand Porsche patented his own version of it. These were both American and French cars using torsion bar suspension before 1914!
As far as ground effects, von Eberhorst had nothing on Lotus either, as early attempts at ground effects as in the Auto Union record car that killed Bernd Rosemeyer were missing the main ingredient that makes it work: the sliding side skirts to seal the tunnels. I would credit Mike Pocobello and Paul van Valkenburg of GM R&D for that, on their inventive 1970 Chaparral 2J.
Everything is a progression... . Not that von Eberhorst was not a mechanical and theoretical genius, because he truly was. He would eventually have figured it out given the opportunity. We owe him the DB3S and part of the DBR1, so there.

Now for the Revell Lotus-Ford and its sister, the BRM: both these models are pale caricatures of the real cars and can be "any scale you like". Terrible, very inaccurate patterns by the boys at Revell. They did better later. Interestingly these models were copied by Japanese slot car makers, some to the point where it is difficult at first sight to figure who did what. Otaki did the BRM as an almost perfect copy while Yone (Yonezawa) did a 100% clone of the Lotus.

That Lotus-Ford is of course a Lotus-Climax type 24 (tube frame) from 1962, because Revell was already tooling these cars before the introduction in May 1962 of the "25". It was bombarded "Ford" after the successful 1963 Indy race as the molds were being completed. Just capitalizing on what was popular.

As far as mid-engine cars at Indy, neither Lotus nor Cooper were first of course. Before WW2, there were the Gulf-Miller cars, and before these, there was an attempt with a V16 contraption based on a modified Hudson chassis. After WW2, in 1949 there was the gorgeous Rounds "Rocket", unsuccessful as in "unfamiliar" and also overweight.

Jack Brabham and John Cooper were the ones who sorted this out, followed a year later by Mickey Thompson, Rolla Vollstedt, then another year again and Lotus came. The Americans were not dumb founded when Lotus came, they had two years in which rear engine Indy cars had shown what they could do, and that with inadequate engines.
The first "29" with the folded aluminum tub were flexy fliers and their torsional rigidity was rather poor, but they still worked as well as the dinosaurs they were competing against. But not better yet. In fact in 1963, the Lotuses were NOT the fastest cornering cars.
That came later, especially with the far stiffer 1965 "Type 38".

John, since the Lotus molds were conceived and begun before the Type 25 and Type 29 became public, the only option to try "naming" that deformed and misnamed car would be... a "24", which would make sense with the BRM sister car. Now visually, there is not much difference between a "24" and a "25", except that both the "25" and the "29" have a different windshield allowing airflow to pass under, and the Revell model does not reflect this very visual detail, hence...
Here is a '61/62 "24":

By the way, here is what I can qualify as a perfect clone of the Revell mongrel, this one by Yonezawa of Japan:

Last, unlike most of their 1/32 scale models, the Revell 1/24 scale models with hard-plastic body and aluminum chassis were always sold in kit form, never in RTR form. Hence they were never part of a racing set made by that company.
Of course the Lotus 23 and Porsche RS61 later gained (well... were retrograded to) a plastic chassis and became racing set cars, with Revell's last such model, an oddly chosen 1955 Ferrari "Super Squalo", a car that was properly trounced by the first postwar Mercedes-Benz F1 in a similar manner as what happened for the past 7 years... and of course prewar.

Meanwhile, the Revell track, as well as the Monogram similar bits, still remains to this day in my opinion the finest plastic slot car track ever produced. So you picked the best, me think.

Allan, yes, it was used to attract investors to capitalize the company as it was getting very involved in the new hobby and tooling was expensive. At the end of the day, investors of course lost their shirt and Revell its company.
The model was assembled but did not have a motor. The driver was hand painted. Here is a picture from the new book:

Please note that the BRM body is far better than the Lotus, is of the late 1962 F1 model, and uses Porsche RS61 hubcaps to simulate the Dunlop Magnesium/aluminum 2-piece riveted 15" wheels. Not quite doing the job, but saved the cost of a new mold. Who was going to know the difference anyway?

"the others ring a bell, but not Marusan... "
Don, here you go: