Shinoda Bodies
Shinoda slot car bodies as a group are widely accepted as representing the purest expression of the Thingie concept, and are one of the few, if not the only collection of slot car body designs that exist independently of their manufacturer. In other words, almost all of us know who designed the Shinoda bodies, but do we know, do we care, or is it even important, who manufactured them?
These bodies were designed by Larry Shinoda, who worked for General Motors and later for Ford (obviously in whatever their design divisions were called). Shinoda was on the GM design team that developed the 1963 Covette Stingray, and is more or less directly responsible for the Corvette shark style body, patterned after his own Mako Shark show car, that replaced the Stingray in 1968. Later Shinoda was on the Ford design team that developed the Boss 302 Mustang. These to say the least are not insignificant credentials.
However, beyond this common knowledge of the designer, there is virtually no published information about his slot car body designs. I presume Shinoda himself either made the molds, or was in some other way integral to their creation, but I've not seen or heard anything about who manufactured the bodies from those molds, who packaged them, distributed them or sold them at retail. Not even the label from the package gives us any clues. Was Shinoda paid for his slot car body design work, and if so, who paid him? Were there more than 6, or 9 or 12 body designs, and if so what happened to the ones not seen here?
There are many more questions than answers, but here are the photos. The last three are titled simply X, Y and Z because they don't seem to have names. If you know the names of any or all of these, or whether they are actually genuine Shinoda designs, please send me an email and I will promptly post it up.
