| These cars are always first introduced at the N Scale Collector’s Convention. We produce forty of them, and they are not announced until opening of the doors at the SWAP-A-RAMA. Each car is a unique design created, painted, and decaled by Lowell. Of the forty cars, twenty are in numbered boxes. The first “concept” car was released at the Baltimore convention in 1995, and it was named “the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company”. Those cars sold out in ten minutes, and that was surprising because the cars were decaled! The next year, at the Denver N Scale Convention, Lowell put Lifesaver’s in a hopper and called it “Operation Lifesaver”. “Operation Lifesaver” was the first concept car that twenty of them were numbered as 1 of 20, 2 of 20, 3 of 20, etc. The other twenty cars were not numbered. That year Lowell offered the first twenty customers the option of always having the same number, year after year, of the new concept car numbered. That’s how the numbered “concept” series was started, and you had to be in the right place, at the right time, which was Denver, Colorado in 1995. Of these twenty sets, the rights of certain numbers have been sold only three times. These twenty customers do not need to be at our table “first in line” to get their cars, as they are always held in reserve for each of them.
Lowell decided to call them “concept” cars following the pattern of the Detroit auto makers. New ideas are rolled out, and some are used, but many are never put into production. We have just decided to add the “Concept Cars’ to our website, but like the Detroit auto makers, some may be special runs someday, but many will not, because they are victims of bad ideas, or “too costly” fees, and will be rare cars from a moment in time. If you have any questions about any of the non-series “concept” cars, you may email Lowell at lowell@lowellsmith.net.
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