Chaparral was an American racing car team of the 1960s which built its own endurance racing cars. The first time I saw a real Chaparral car was at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England in the late 1990s, a very loud 2F with an oversized rear spoiler. It was about the same time that I acquired my first miniature Chaparral, a Hot Wheels Chaparral 2:
The Chaparral 2 won the 1965 Sebring 12 hours race, and the Hot Wheels is a very neat model of that car.
The next Chaparral to find its way into my collection was a superb 2D, the 1966 endurance racer which triumphed at the Nürburgring, and performed well at Le Mans:
Hot Wheels did a great job with this one and it only cost me 99p back in 2003.
And so we come to that noisy 2F which I spotted at Goodwood, although it was hard to miss with that enormous rear spoiler:
Unfortunately Hot Wheels have yet to make a model of this outrageous race car (why not!) but back in the late 1960s Italian company Mercury did make a 1:66 scale version in their Speedy series, although they rather underplayed the spoiler (probably because it wouldn't have fit in their standard size box if they had gone for the full height):
It lacks the finesse of the Hot Wheels models, but it does have a certain charm. Not easy to come by these days, especially in white.
Finally we come to the 2G Can Am car, which Hot Wheels modelled way back in 1969, although I only acquired mine recently (thank you eBay!):
Like all early Redlines these are quite pricey these days, especially with an original spoiler (beware of modern repros!) Mine set me back about £20 a couple of years ago.
That completes my brief look at Chaparral racers, but I will be back soon with more endurance racers, F1 and much more.
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