WTF Friday: Zingers

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Awhile ago I came across a fairly small picture of a few oddly proportioned, about go kart sized, vehicles sitting on an oval track waiting for a scantily clad woman to drop the flag and thought what the heck are those?

Then I forgot about the picture almost entirely.

A few weeks later I found a photo of a similar car (with yet another woman in it) and thought I ought to get to the bottom of what I was seeing.

Did the run? Were they go-karts? Power Wheels? These were the questions I needed answered so I turned to Google and found out that they were in fact called Zingers.

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The first ‘Zinger’ photo I came across
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and the second photo where scale is a bit easier to interpet

Built originally in much smaller scale by MPC the idea behind Zingers was to stuff hilariously out of scale motors and wheels under regularly proportioned bodies.

Denny Johnson birthed the idea and in the early 70’s six “full” size ones were built using 1:1 motors and wheels.

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The original model Zingers
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What appears to be a scan of the original line up

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zinger_1
The next few photos I am assuming are from a more recent shoot of the surviving Zingers

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zinger_6

Sadly none of them were actually capable of moving under their own power which kind of just makes them elaborate engine stands.

After looking at the photos a few times the semi truck one started to look mighty familiar so I did a little digging in the crates and it turns out I actually saw it at Performance World in 2010.

Whether or not it’s the exact same one I can’t be sure but it certainly looks as though it is.

More info on these things can be found here and here.

Someone should make one that runs, the dune buggy looks the most feasible to do so. Perhaps the van…

Flashback Friday

Posted this car in this weeks Theme Tuesday, hard to say which wheels I like more these or the Sempeks.

Here’s a little video of the car as well.

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