NOTE: NOTE: ONE (1) ONLY, PICS SHOW 1 PR, BUT I ONLY HAVE 1 LEFT, 1 ONLY FOR SALE. PICS ARE WRONG.
For this listing we offer one (1 ONLY) Deep Wide Rear Wheels by Gar-Vic #218 for 5:40 thread 1/8" axles NOS
1/24th and 1/25th scale. Knurled and Raised Center on Wheels for Center Grooved Tires. (See Pics)
Measurements:
Wide 3/8"
Tall 3/4"
OD 7/8"
GARVIC Competition Mag Wheels 1/25 Scale Rear Machined aluminum competition mag with 5-40 thread center hub for all 1/8" Axles, bright aluminum rim with dull center spoke to stimulate the prototype American mags. #218
Gar-Vic
This California company is typical of the period’s
“fast buck” artists. Founded by Gary and Victor “X” (name withheld by request),
the company began by producing, wheels, tires guide flags and frames for various
motors, from Kemtrons to Pittmans. When the “boom” started, they issued their
first kit, a Ford GT40 with a vac-formed copy of the K&B car, along with a
Revell-supplied SP90 blue Mabuchi FT36. This was fairly poor, to say the least,
and did not sell well. But their next offering was substantially better.
Following in Classic’s successful footsteps with the Manta Ray, Gar-Vic issued
the Firebird RTR, a double bubble-canopied caricature of General Motor’s turbine
car. It had a sidewinder chassis with drop arm, and Gar-Vic’s version of the
Mabuchi FT36D, with double-ended shaft. Each end carried a pinion, so you could
change the ratio by turning over the motor in the frame…The designer should have
been awarded the Nobel Prize for superior engineering. The gold or black
anodized chassis had the typical Gar-Vic aluminum non-descript wheels with
sponge rear tires that have dried-up on all cars found today, to the point of
rotating on the rims when turned…The fronts were nice hard rubber treaded tires.
Motors were dark metallic silver, then pink, with a label showing Gar-Vic’s
emblem, a black panther.
The body, originally blue, was later painted in many
color combinations including metalflake colors, very popular in the sixties.
A version in blue, orange and black depicting a bat was Gar-Vic’s answer to
the licensed Batmobiles produced by Classic, BZ and K&B, this without paying
a cent in royalties of course. It also was issued in a scarcer gold and black
color, both sold as body kits only.
Several body variations followed, all
using the same components, and sold in square boxes with full color
illustration: the Coronado, a shark-like design; the Sonic Needle, a green or
red pointy thing; the Ocelot, the closest thing they offered to a realistic
2-door coupe; the X-Stream, another coupe very similar to BZ’s Banshee, and one
of the hardest Gar-Vic cars to find, and the Lunar, a bubble canopy open-wheel
affair (sounds familiar by now?) with its own frame, an inline design in
gold-anodized aluminum. It seems to be hardest to find, along with Gar-Vic’s
last car, produced in 1967: a red and silver McLaren MKII mounted on a
blue-anodized inline frame.
It is also known that they produced an H.O. set,
using styrofoam as track background (but the author has been unable to
find an example to date) shortly before the company folded.