Spottedlaurel

Popped into Aldi this morning. HWs at £1.49 each. They had remnants of the recent case with purple Datsun and green Volvo estates, and quite a few of an older one with red RS2000, IMSA Audi and white SWB Quattro. Thanks for getting the Land Cruiser @Datsuncog! Will be interesting to compare it with the older, light blue version I have.

Good to hear. Economy not actually that much worse than my 2014 hybrid RX. On a constant-ish speed motorway/autoroute run it gets little more than 30mpg, it's only when doing some gentler cruising/town work that the hybrid side of things really kicks in and I can get more than 35-36. LS400 certainly worse, as was the Camry V6 - both low-mid 20s.

I'd certainly be interested in a Land Cruiser if you see another one please.

Hiace finished: Seems that I started it back in May 2021. It sat for too long before I got back onto it over the Christmas holiday. Had fun with the various extras that came with it, plus Fujimi accessory parts and dinghy from an AMT Hilux. Makes for a nice companion piece to the Sunny Truck: Interior, before it got assembled: Not hugely detailed, and I certainly wouldn't class it amongst my better efforts, but it's got a bit a bit of character and definitely looks like a Hiace.

Ah yes, saves me digging around trying to find what version I already had - that's the one. Was it offered officially in several liveries, or have I got a rebranded one? Anyone interested? With a bit of chassis stretch I bet @danthecapriman could make a great recovery truck out of it!

I'm almost there on the Hiace kit, just mirrors to attach then some outdoor photos as it's a decent day. In the meantime, charity shop purchases yesterday: Countach is tidy, was only 75p. The other two came from a different shop, they had a few other boxed vehicles with dairy-related logos, including a boxed Escort van in the Eden Vale livery. Looked slightly DIY though. Now I have this Transit my unboxed example is surplus to requirements, if anyone is interested? They also had an unboxed Britains Iveco tanker for £10, which seems to be quite good value. Might go back again next weekend, especially as I discovered the shop in town that sells secondhand baby/kids' stuf has a few old diecasts at reasonable prices. Celica and Accord came from @bunglebus, remainder found at Sainsbury's. As I already have a black one the Altezza has gone to Miss SL's BF, part-exchanged for something else that he found in a charity shop: Excellent AS content here, even a CF for @eddyramrod! Would be happy to go a boot sale and find this one:

Another one here with a fondness for that CX. Mine came as a slightly unlikely inclusion in the Stunt Jump set, but in fairness it was faster than the overly-wide BMW CS with no suspension. I think it may still be around in one of the boxes that master SL played with, but I've bought a couple more since in case it doesn't turn up....

Thanks. I'll probably never top the completion rate of 2020, but I am still plodding away with a few. Got a Celsior and Fiat 131 Abarth to finish, and I've just started on a couple of Datsun 240ZGs.

So nearly there with the Hiace: Should be up for a weekend completion, then I can properly start on the next project or two.

Just had a trawl through my stickers and tags album on Flickr. Assuming these are all original plates, looks like they were doing both options back then, with a third, all-blue alternative a little later just to confuse you even more.... If the above are a reliable source then it seems to me that the multi-colour version is good for mid '80s, and they then moved onto single colour.

Had the unexpected experience of visiting a Tesco and picking through a case I hadn't seen before. Almost forgot what it was like.... I stopped myself getting too many (maybe I'll pick up one or two more on next Monday's milk run?), but I was happy to find this selection. Yes, I already have a Proton but it seems just to good to be true so I had to get another.

The '95 option is easy, a Camry estate. A 2.2 manual was just over £20k, so with the change I could buy a shed full of old Datsuns at the stupidly cheap prices they were back then. The 3.0 V6 version would just about have been in budget, but there's a timeless honesty about the 2.2 that I never tired of in the 10-15 years I ran them. I'm really struggling with the new option, there just isn't the choice of big, quietly capable Japanese estates that I'd want to own for that long.

Just asking, how much would the Celica and Accord be please? P.S. Anglia looks ace!

Random eBay find that arrived yesterday: Hobbies pattern for a lovely, indeed grand-looking garage. Maybe something to have a go at one day, and of interest to me as they are a Norfolk-based company. Happy to use the present tense, as they're still trading and I remembered that I got some of their pumps and a car lift a few years ago. They operate from a bricks and mortar shop not too far from me and sell normal kits, materials etc as well as patterns, must make the effort to visit one day. I remember some older premises which might be the former Dereham address, it looked like it was due to be demolished for redevelopment.

That 10% figure of monthly income is interesting. Even if I forget the years when I had finance to buy something, I suspect that tax, servicing, insurance etc was never very often below that amount.

Phew, that Marina kit I posted the other day on the tat thread ended at £186: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/166518047625

That silver Capri II looks really good without the 'vinyl' roof. I managed to make some good progress on my current 1:24 project: For something that is quite toylike, sitting on a chassis shared with another van and intended to be motorized, the basics are all there and it certainly looks like a Hiace. Some final detailing and tidying required and I should finish this one off next weekend.

/\ Nice! On a related note, anyone walking past out house this morning would have been treated to this sight: All run essentially the same 2-litre engine, and between them they've done around half a million miles. The Carina E continued to do a fine job of being my weekend transport. As appropriate to my middle-age, yesterday it took me to an optician's appointment for new varifocals, and today it was used for a trip out to the garden centre.

Meant to drop this here a while back:

That MR2 is very nice. I'm not sure if Miss SL's BF knows about that one....

Yes please, wall type for me.

I'd be interested in the Majorette Mercedes fire appliance if the squirter thing on the roof is still there, which it looks to be, and it's fairly cheap. I think mine might have gone AWOL. Any other intact 1970s/80s Majorettes would be good please....

Popped into a local Tesco this morning, was like going back in time - they had a fairly fresh HWs case, but it was the one with blue Nissan Patrol and orange Mazda Cosmo. They also had Matchbox 5-packs at £5.50. The one that has tempted me several times is the wagon set, including a baby poo brown Mercedes, white Jeep Cherokee and Mini van. Will be going back that way later today if anyone 'needs' one. Had three of them on the shelf, I'd have got one if there was something Japanese in there.

Yes, it's a shame Langleys moved out of their old shop. There was also another one in Norwich called Keller's - a quick search suggests they then went on to sell diecasts online, but I don't know if they still do. If you fancy a trip along the A14 then there is DJ Collectables in Stowmarket - quite random as to what he'll have, but worth a look. I like visiting Model Junction in Bury, I get quite a lot of my materials there even if they rarely have any kits that catch my eye. Have got some good ones in the past there, however. There are always other people in the shop when I go, and they have longstanding staff who seem to know their stuff. Don't know what they have in the way of diecast however.

It's a funny thing that some French market imports have the very yellow lights. Random selection seen this summer: Yet it's not so obvious on the domestic models: Yellow bulbs just visible on the Simca. If it was adequate for that why didn't the importers do the same thing? One or two of those above might have been done retrospectively, but I've seen similar yellow lights on other French BMWs from the 1970s/80s.