[dgersh]

One of my favorites Paul, congrats on a great find!

I just picked up one here in Europe that has two Russkit 23 motors - and since a friend found one of these absolutely new, I know that Russkit must have sold this hotter version - but not sure it came out in the States.

I notice that your's has the "turbine" wheels, which is what I chose to put on an earlier Iso I found - but on the originals, it seems that the car came with wire wheels...

They run pretty well too... with 2 pairs of urethane tires, a pleasure to drive. On my earlier one, I put in two of my rewound 23s - a bit of a handful in the tighter corners I must admit.

Don

 

[dgersh]

Amen - even some sellers who know better don't always explicitely state this kind of stuff!

I'm a little curious about the wheel inserts too: seems like the ones Paul used are closer to the car's actual wheels, and that's what I chose when restoring my first Iso. Wonder why Russkit chose the wires - did some versions of the Iso Grifo have wire wheels?

Also, can't believe I didn't notice the stuff Philippe points out.

The chassis is an odd one, because altho it was special to the car, the wheelbase is still too long, and the wheels just barely fit inside the wheel wells without rubbing. Never understood why, if Russkit was going to make a special chassis for this car, they didn't make it the right length (maybe they wanted to use the existing tooling...)

Anyway, nice to see that you've found one of your grails Paul. The Eagle does come up occasionally, but haven't seen one in a while... I've got one in the "to be restored" drawer, and hope to run it at the Bordo Open Wheels race next year...

Don

 

[dgersh]

Hi Brad,

If you mean the Super Spyder chassis with the stamped body mount, that's certainly worth a Wow!

We still don't know for sure if Russkit did these with other than the Porsche body... a guy here has a McLaren as well, out of a hobby shop as NOS, but still no smoking gun, ie, a MIB example.

Don

 

[dgersh]

P - I think you mean the Iso in the standard "Black Widow" series...

Have never seen a Russkit 24 in one of these - does the museum have one? How about the Russkit 28 - any of those in the 1/24 cars? Maybe the Italian Honda issues...

Don

 

[dgersh]

You mean the 1/32 Russkit cars were marketed by Parma? or the 1/24 cars? In any case, a new one for me!

I thought it was REH that had recovered some of the 1/32 cars and sold them under their brand... I have a Ferrari 350 that seems to have been from REH, not Russkit, but don't remember why I had that impression...

Don

 

[dgersh]

Yummy, thanks for photos Philippe.

I wasn't clear: I know that Russkit did these three as Super Spyder cars, I was talking about a McLaren with the aluminum bracket instead of the soldered tubing. I think we all had a long discussion about these a few years back on one of the French forums, since one of the guys here found a McLaren like this as NOS in a hobby shop.

This was one of the car types from a major manufacturer that most surprised me when I started collecting. I thought I knew the market pretty well, but had absolutely no idea about the Super Spyder cars... I don't think they were ever advertised in any of the magazines (or general catalogs?); they're in a couple of the Russkit catalogs, but not sure I had these at the time, and I just didn't know they existed. I picked up a McLaren with tube body mounts at some point, thinking it was a customer modified Spyder chassis, and slowly began to realize it was factory as the evidence mounted.

Don

PS: good find Steve! There was an unlabeled one on ebay last year, and thought I could get it uncontested, but it went pretty high.