[SAMPSON]

This is a rather unusual addition to my collection. Its a 1962 Yonezawa electric Indianapolis tether race set. The 2 cars are each 10 inches long(one is the # 1 aj foyt 1961 1st place indy car the other is the red everfast indy car).the tower is 9 inches tall & holds batterys.1 ring toward the top is for 1 car the other ring turns for the 2nd car. each car is connected to its own ring on the tower by an electrical wire. There are 2 controllers with variable speed controls.they attach to the tower at the bottom. the red car has a metal prong coming up from the body so the wire attaching it to the tower wont get tangled with the white # 1 car as they race each other around the tower. This set is quite rare in this condition. They are usually rusted & missing parts. Its unique because you can control the speed of each car individually .everything is made of tin.

Bernard Sampson

 

[merkit the grof]

Wow, nice piece!

Joel

 

[dgersh]

Amen! Great find Bernard. Have you tried to get these running at all? Seems like the inner car would always win, but maybe there's something I didn't understand.

Don

 

[SAMPSON]

I havent tried it yet. The wires & their little plugs are delicate .I dont want to do any damage to the set,but id sure like to try it out. The other sets ive seen have damaged wires. The electrical wires are all thats holding he cars to the tower,otherwise they would shoot off. i forgot to mention the cars make a engine noise. I think the inter car would win most of the time, but you still have separate speed controls for each. Then again the inner car is the aj foyt car & was the winner of the Indy 500 in 1961. So perhaps Yonesawa meant for the inner car to win? Bernard Sampson

 

[TSRF]

Bernard, it's "Yonezawa" with a "z", and these are MINE!!! MINE!!!

Seriously, a beautiful set that came in a square box that is difficult to find nowadays, but the cars are not that rare by themselves.
I LOVE front-engine Indy cars, and of course the white one is a replica of sorts of AJ Foyt's 1961 Indy-500 winner, with adverts done in such a way that the Japanese company would not be subjected to the same lawsuits they had when JC Agajanian, the owner of the 1952 winning car driven by Troy Ruttman, blew his Stetson hat high in the atmosphere and sued Yonezawa for the following infringement to their attempt to breathe his air:

So the toys were removed from the stores shelves, destroyed and that was it, until 1955 when Yonezawa re-issued the toy with new markings:

In 1961, they did not make the same mistake, and issued a new large toy with the same markings:

At the same time, they issued the same toy but in a smaller size, first as a friction powered model seen above with the larger one, then as an electric powered version as seen on Bernard's set.

These are very nice toys, made of printed thin sheet-steel of a quality only the Japanese and German toy makers were able to offer in the 1950-1960's.