My ’66 F100’s dash has become a repository of kiddie toys found in the dirt or under decks of my rentals. I’m doing a bit of landscaping and yesterday I uncovered a my latest find. I’m not exactly sure what it’s a model of; maybe you’ll identify it after I hose it off.
Doesn’t exactly look like a scale model of anything I’m familiar with in the real world, but then I’m getting a bit out of touch. But it deserves a home.
And there it is now, having joined the rest of the gang. That extended-front Nash Metropolitan dragster was the first, about 22 years ago. And it’s still my favorite.
What’s riding on your dash?
While I’ve had some toys on the dash of past trucks and vans, obtained in the same fashion, I don’t think there are any there right now. Mostly work gloves, receipts and other paper work, a box of tissues and maybe a roll of paper towels. In the cars other than a parking reciept that may stay for a few weeks past the point where it needed to be displayed, usually nothing.
Dust. A shameful amount of dust.
Is that an Audi TT? Or Monaro/GTO? Or a 2nd gen Pulsar (edit: Nissan NX)? An odd grouping, but oddly it has touches of all three to my eyes. The attached photo is not my own dashboard, obviously … it’s a Prius taxi I saw locally several years ago, but it’s my favorite mini-auto dashtop collection and seemed appropriate to share here. My own dashboard? Usually just dust, occasionally a solar Luci light, a hat, or a toll transponder. Or all three.
Maybe it’s my driving style or the smooth rounded surfaces of modern dashboards, because if I dare put anything on top of the dash it will all fly into the rear floorboards after two stoplights. Unfortunately dust isn’t so eager to do the same.
The toy looks like either a riced out final gen Celica or possibly a second gen Eclipse
^^^ This ^^^
I even agree with Matt’s guesses on the car. Perhaps even a Toyota MR2 (the newer rounder one).
It looks like Captain Morgan has had a little too much grog. Nothing on my dash. I just wiped it down and gave the interior a good cleaning after a loooong winter.
Dust, pollen, and an adhesive “dish” mount from a TomTom that hasn’t been used since about 2012. It would look worse to take it off and have adhesive residue everywhere. Fortunately, no cracked material (knock on wood) like many other third-generation Acura TLs.
I just cleaned the Golf, which is a Sunday morning tradition. There was plenty of dog hair on the dash. And on the floor. And on the seats. And in every conceivable nook and cranny.
Dust. And a few small, dead bugs.
I had a transistor radio slide across the dash and out the open window of a non air conditioned car one afternoon, so I don’t put things there any more.
Another reminder that I need to clean the interiors of our cars. As others have said, modern cars seem to be designed so that any object not stuck down will quickly slide off of the dash. Actually I’m somewhat anal about the inside of my car, I don’t want any loose papers or anything else cluttering up the passenger compartment; I can accept the outside of the car being dirty much more than having trash on the inside. My wife is just the opposite; she drives her car through the car wash on a frequent basis but tends to let detritus accumulate on the inside. I have long since learned that preparation for a road trip (we nearly always take her car) includes me rounding up all the loose trash I can find and throwing it away.
My ’96 Ram has a cutout in the dash on the passenger side where a 1/25 scale model car fits perfectly. About 20 years ago, I built a blue ’69 Charger model and put it there, and then about 10 years ago, I bought the actual car so the model stayed. Otherwise my dashes are clear.
I used to have a model of a Ford Maverick in the storage bin under my radio back when l had my Rio. I was going to buy a 1976 Maverick sedan with a 200 l6 but it never came to pass
I don’t currently have anything on my Mazda, but will be moving my handcuffs off the rear view mirror and onto my project car soon!
I showed the picture to my 8-year old, an avid collector of Hot Wheels, and he immediately said, “that’s Asphalt Assault”. To prove it, he went and got me one of his Asphalt Assaults (he has more than one). The one he showed me has a different color body and windows – Hot Wheels usually makes most of its models available in different color schemes over time – but it is definitely the same car.
When I explained to him that we were trying to figure out what car this is, he asked, “Why doesn’t the person who has it just look at the bottom?” The one he showed me does have the name on the baseplate, although not all Hot Wheels do, and different versions of the same Hot Wheels model don’t always have identical baseplates (so it’s possible that some copies of Asphalt Assault identify themselves on the baseplate, but others don’t).
The bottom line: like many Hot Wheels, this is a “fantasy vehicle”, not based on any real car. I think it has a ’90s Japanese sports coupe vibe to it, though.
When I bought it near Detroit sometime last decade, my ’73 Dart’s dashboard had a haloed plastic Mary which swiftly moved to my husband’s photography studio and resulted in a show series (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 7th pics at the link)
(…Plastic Jesus, plastic Jesus…ridin’ on the dashboard of my carrrrr…but I won’t feel protected amply ’til I’ve got the whole damn fam’ly, ridin’ on the dashboard of my carrrrr!)
I’m more of a fan of Wooden Jesus.
Wooden Jesus where are you from?
Korea or Canada or maybe Taiwan?
I didn’t know it was the holy land
But I believed from the minute the check left my hand
…and my ’71 Dart arrived in 2006 or so with what certain others in the Slant-6 club immediately began calling a “horsepower chicken”:
Nothing.
I once had a dead yellow jacket in the rear dash corner than eventually turned to dust after many years.
How long did that take? I have a dead bee in my Thunderbird’s rear window that’s been there for several years. At first I left it there because I was too lazy to crawl back there and remove it, but now I’m just curious how long it’ll be until it turns to dust. I’m surprised it’s remains have lasted this long!
That’s what I did too. I think it turned lighter colored after about four years and was only bits and pieces after five or six. Hung around longer than I thought. Still outlasted french fries under the seat I’d bet.
I had a dead bee that had managed to get between the rear window and the lens of my middle brake light of my ’95 Camry. As I have always liked a neat, clean car, that bee “tasked me” for years until I gave the car to my daughter. Can’t say after that.
And there was “Schmoosh Monkey” a small stuffed monkey “schmooshed” between the dash top and the driver’s side A pillar of my wife’s 2000 Contour (“Connie”). Later on I got a small stuffed dog for my dash, placed in the same location. His moniker was “Schmoosh Doggie Dog”.
My sunglasses. Unless I’m wearing them.
I don’t care for the reflection of objects onto my windshield.
The Nash dragster is cool, it was also done in a nice aqua color, probably the 1st version
In addition to having/being able to identify the car that was the main subject of the article, my son also has one of these Nash dragsters. His is chrome-colored. I just noticed that he had it recently; I’m actually not sure where it came from.
In addition to producing its cars in all sorts of different color schemes, Hot Wheels also has a tendency to periodically pull old castings out of mothballs and start making them again, so the Nash my son has was probably manufactured more recently than the one Paul has (and the one jonco43 posted a picture of). Then again, as the youngest of three children, he has accumulated all of the Hot Wheels that once belonged to his two older siblings, as well as a smattering that once belonged to older relatives. He sometimes comes home from my mother’s house with cars that belonged to me or my brother when we were kids, or some that my late father bought during a period later in his life when he collected Hot Wheels. So it’s certainly not impossible that the Nash my son has is a decade or two old.
He knows that I like the Hot Wheels/Matchbox/etc. that are “real cars” better than the fantasy vehicles. We recently went through his “real cars” and counted how many he had of each brand. I think the Nash was the only (non-Jeep) AMC product we found in his collection. Chevrolet was #1; VW was #1 among non-American bands; Datsun/Nissan was #1 among Asian brands.
My son was really into Thomas when he was younger, too, so he liked that part of Paul’s collection as well….
On my car, a 2001 Civic, I never have anything on the dash; as stated prev, new car smooth dashboards let everything slide around. My prev car, a 1988 Civic, had large storage areas on top of the dash, it was pre airbags. I divided one for diff coins, very handy for diff tolls in those pre ez pass days,. I miss that car sometimes, it was well built and very well thought out.
.A toy tasmanian devil rides on the dash of my Hillman, theres nothin on the dash in my Citroen bar the centre display and Navman GPS
I recognize the wooden/magnetic train on the right–Thomas the Tank Engine! How did you find HIM? (this is what mine looked like when I was a child; they looked like this up to 2001)
Absolutely nothing. My father was a “dashboard as storage shelf” guy and I was traumatized by the mass of sliding stuff when I would drive his cars with perhaps a bit more spirit than was advisable. I felt vindicated when a Bic lighter slid down into the defroster vent of his 80 Town Coupe (when he was driving, not me). Which was just one more reason to hate that car.
Ok, there is occasionally the Garmin nav system that my Mrs obstinately refuses to consider inferior to Google Maps on my phone. It has a beanbag-style base that sits on the dash on trips.
…”dashboard as a storage shelf” can be deadly with today’s airbags. Passengers feet on the dash likewise.
2011 Ranger: backup camera monitor (attached with Loctite putty); Little Tree air freshener and cross keychain hanging from mirror
GPS which I don’t need for my home town. It still has the memory chip from a recent road trip thru Poland and Czech Republic. Its just easier to store it there than the footwell where it might get crushed.
2005 Astro: inspirational message display I bought from Kmart (also attached with Loctite putty, to the windshield while firmly wedged between it & the dash); same stuff hanging from mirror as in my Ranger
Nothing else in either vehicle (I WOULD add a backup camera to the Astro, but the display wouldn’t be center b/c of the license plate location–it’s on the right side of the Dutch Doors)
My Mom keeps a little Minion plush wedged between the windshield and the dash of her 2012 Scion IQ. When Christmas comes around, she’ll change it out for a little dog in a snow jacket
Being in the desert mostly, there are two brimmed hats at the ready on the dash.
And a small solar panel with battery storage inside velcroed to one corner; at night it powers under-hood lights that deter pack rats from hanging out and feasting on wires.
On an Element the best storage is the shelving that runs below decks on the dash, lots of stuff there but no toys.
Are you related to Sid and his sandbox?
Had to get this dashcover, first time I drove into the sun all I could see is a perfect image of the top of the dash reflecting off the inside of the windshield instead of the road ahead.
The general shape of your new find reminds me of an Acura RSX with a Fast and Furious treatment.
My car’s dash mostly gathers dust but does feature a miniature K-9 from Doctor Who as a reference to the line from the School Reunion episode where Mickey complains about having to wait in the car with the little tin dog