The Backyard – Vintage Goodness and Old Man Yells at Cloud

Hello everyone and Happy Friday! Welcome to the Backyard!

This weekend, the JConcepts Vintage Clash of Champions is taking place at the Hoosier Hobbyplex in New Albany, IN. If you want to see all the classes being ran, check out this post.

This event has drawn an insane amount of entries, and I’ve been drooling at all the pics coming in. So many excellent classic trucks and buggies, with amazing paint jobs to boot. You can check out more photos on the Mod Live Media Facebook page, and it’s well worth a look!

I was prepared to dive into 1/8 off-road racing this Summer. I made a post about it a couple months ago. I had been eyeing all the platforms and catching myself up on the what-was-what as far as tech goes and had decided on getting involved with a truggy.

After having everything “added to cart” several times, I balked. It’s not really the money necessarily, though of course with something like a big 1/8 scale, that does factor in- it’s a lot of coin. Still, I was ready to commit!

Gah, this post is going to make me sound like an old man, and I fear there’s no way around it. I guess I’ll just dive in. It’s the cosmetics of it all. I just cannot stand the way modern truggies look, to the point where it actively causes me to lose interest. They don’t look like trucks at all. They look like ill-proportioned buggies.

Buggies have fared a bit better stylistically, but I’m not exactly a fan of the cab forward style, either.

I understand why everything is the way it is, technology and performance and all that. I have also come to terms with the fact that I hate it and it’s probably just not for me.

I didn’t really plan to post something like this, but then I got to looking at some of the beautiful getups from the Vintage Clash of Champions race, it got my blood pumping and….yeah. Here we are. Buggies look like buggies, and trucks look like trucks. The way it should be!

I’m not going to say with absolute certainty that I won’t get back into 1/8 racing. There is still a chance that this Summer my need to turn some laps may override my dislike of current off-road cosmetics. And if I do get back into it, I’ll post about it, for sure.

I do have a hope though, even if it’s a wildly misbegotten one- with the absolute explosion in the popularity of vintage racing, I hope some of it bleeds back over into the modern scene. Those old buggy and stadium truck designs are glorious, and even if they aren’t totally scale by modern r/c hyper-scale standards, they still do the job well enough.

Ok, time to take my daily medication and hit up the 5pm Golden Corral special so I can get back to the retirement home before sundown.

Until next time, keep it on all 4’s!