Like monster T-shirts come to life, the wild and whimsical Zingers have been entertaining hot rodders of all ages for nearly half a century now.

We were too young to be taking notes at the time, but as we understand it, the story of the Zingers goes something like this: In 1969,  a young builder named Dennis Johnson entered the model car contest at the Detroit Autorama with a clever little creation that combined the body from a 1/43 scale plastic kit with the engine and wheels from a much larger 1/25 kit. The exaggerated, cartoonish proportions created a far-out visual not unlike the crazy monster T-shirts created by “Big Daddy” Ed Roth and others, and the hot rodders at Cobo Hall fell in love with it.

Executives from Model Products Corporation (MPC) just down the road in Mount Clemens, Michigan, the sponsors of the contest, took a studied look at Johnson’s wacky model, and they saw a hit. They picked up the cute concept and ran with it, creating a full line of crazy model kits they called Zingers. The kits were easy to tool, inexpensive to buy, and fun to build, and MPC sold a ton of them through hobby shops and department stores in the early ’70s. The whimsical racers included a dune buggy, a ’57 Chevy, a VW Beetle, a van, a dragster, even a miniature 18-wheeler.

Naturally, none of this escaped the attention of Bob Larivee, promoter of the Autorama and a nationwide chain of rod and custom shows under the banner of the International Show Car Association (ISCA). With an eye and an ear for the hot-rod show audience that was second to none, he commissioned a small fleet of floor-sized Zingers to travel the ISCA circuit through his company, Promotions, Inc.

Two noted Detroit-area builders, Chuck Miller of Styline Customs and Steve Tansy, recreated six of the MPC models for Larivee using full-size Detroit V8s and miniature fiberglass bodies. (Tansy reportedly built the dragster and dune buggy, while Miller did the semi rig, Dodge van, Corvette, and Beetle.) None of the Zingers could run or drive, of course, but that was hardly the point. The tiny racers were built to generate smiles. We believe all six of the Zinger show cars still exist today, entertaining hot rodders young and old.