Shite in Miniature II

[Datsuncog]

Next item in the Corgi Model Club promotion has now arrived...

It's the No. 330 Porsche Carrera 6.

Engine detailing quite nice...

This time they've chosen to model a rarer variant - most examples of this model were white with red spray-masked doors and front hatch, with a dark blue plastic engine cover. This one's blue instead of red, and has a yellow engine cover.

Decal on the rear panel, like the one on the bonnet of The Saint's Volvo, has been fake-aged. I've already expressed my views on this practice...

Base is pretty plain; I don't have an original to compare it to, but I'll guess it's broadly the same.

There was quite a clean original on the stall on Friday past, but I hadn't looked at it all that closely.

Also came with these little dudes.

Six of 'em, and looking a little shinier and bendier than the couple of originals I've had, but still quite a nice repro set.

Still trying to decide how much further I want to go with this mail-order collection...

[stuboy]

Went to a ford show and bought a porsche 1/16 scale

[sierraman]

Polistil? I have that one in powder blue. 

[stuboy]

12 hours ago, sierraman said:

Polistil? I have that one in powder blue. 

yeah and tonka on the base plate

[Split_Pin]

I've got that in silver. I got it for £1 from ebay in 2015 as the description said the casting was cracked. It turns out it was just a casting line on the front wing. Nice big basic model, I wish Id had it as a kid.

[stuboy]

12 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

I've got that in silver. I got it for £1 from ebay in 2015 as the description said the casting was cracked. It turns out it was just a casting line on the front wing. Nice big basic model, I wish Id had it as a kid.

id like to find its age

[flat4alfa]

17 minutes ago, stuboy said:

id like to find its age

Older than 1994, when Polistil / Tonka parted

[eddyramrod]

A parcel arrived yesterday, containing this...

1950 Studebaker in 1/18 scale.  So I put it in my 40s/50s/60s cabinet, to keep company with a 1950 Chevrolet Bel Air.

Today I had a better idea.

Herbert Lom drove one in the robbery scene, in The Ladykillers (1955).  Not quite the right blue, but it does mean the car now inhabits my Film/TV cabinet instead of the 50s set.

After that, some prep work took place.

The two Corgis were a right pain to drill.  As many of you will know, Corgi's rivets of the period tended to have lovely smooth heads.  Which of course are not easy to drill into, even starting with a very small pilot bit and working up.  Anyway I got there.  The Matchbox D-series came apart easy enough.  And then there was the Oxford Diecast Anglia van.  Only two rivets, and they have dished heads so I could get in, but the second one put up a fight.

As you can see, I got it apart, but it came rather suddenly and with violence.  One of the axles flew off....

And I still haven't found it.  FFS, my back yard is tiny, there isn't anywhere for it to hide!  What this means is, they haven't made it to the caustic bath yet because I turned the fucking yard upside down looking for that escaped axle.  Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

[bunglebus]

10 hours ago, Datsuncog said:

Next item in the Corgi Model Club promotion has now arrived...

Bah, I've not had the Volvo yet, got an email saying it's out of stock

[bunglebus]

8 hours ago, eddyramrod said:

The two Corgis were a right pain to drill

I use a round burr tool in my Dremel to make a depression in the rivet first to help centre the drill. Stole the idea from one of the restorers on YouTube.

The axle will be somewhere impossible like on top of the bathroom cabinet. Got one of those magnet on a stick things to go "fishing" with?

[sierraman]

12 hours ago, stuboy said:

id like to find its age

I got mine in about 92/93? It probably wasn’t new then to be fair. Got me thinking now, it’s in the loft somewhere still in the box. 

[Datsuncog]

12 hours ago, stuboy said:

id like to find its age

I received the convertible version in June 1990, going by this flattering* pic...

[RoadworkUK]

Another Tim I know got his circa 1990. The fact that it was 1/16 made me cross – it towered above my 1/18 Ferrari 288 GTO when we played with them on the parquet floor of the hall after school.

[MarvinsMom]

12 hours ago, eddyramrod said:

A parcel arrived yesterday, containing this...

1950 Studebaker in 1/18 scale.  So I put it in my 40s/50s/60s cabinet, to keep company with a 1950 Chevrolet Bel Air.

Today I had a better idea.

Herbert Lom drove one in the robbery scene, in The Ladykillers (1955).  Not quite the right blue, but it does mean the car now inhabits my Film/TV cabinet instead of the 50s set.

After that, some prep work took place.

The two Corgis were a right pain to drill.  As many of you will know, Corgi's rivets of the period tended to have lovely smooth heads.  Which of course are not easy to drill into, even starting with a very small pilot bit and working up.  Anyway I got there.  The Matchbox D-series came apart easy enough.  And then there was the Oxford Diecast Anglia van.  Only two rivets, and they have dished heads so I could get in, but the second one put up a fight.

As you can see, I got it apart, but it came rather suddenly and with violence.  One of the axles flew off....

And I still haven't found it.  FFS, my back yard is tiny, there isn't anywhere for it to hide!  What this means is, they haven't made it to the caustic bath yet because I turned the fucking yard upside down looking for that escaped axle.  Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

didn't Fozzy Bear drive one of those Studebakers in "the great muppet movie" back  in the olden dayz?

[bunglebus]

Also very similar to "The Loaner" from The Mask

Personally I think the name they gave it was genius - descriptive and ominous at once

[flat4alfa]

41 minutes ago, MarvinsMom said:

didn't Fozzy Bear drive one of those Studebakers in "the great muppet movie" back  in the olden dayz?

Two choices of colour scheme

Before

After

Complete with Citroen Mehari attachment.

[junkyarddog]

Ah yes,a bear in it's natural habitat....A Studebaker

🤣

[Heidel_Kakao]

Anyone want anything?

[eddyramrod]

I've got my missing axle!  I spotted the lady next door in her yard and told her what happened.  She had a look round and found it in a drain, where I couldn't see from my side.  Thank goodness!

[eddyramrod]

37 minutes ago, Heidel_Kakao said:

Anyone want anything?

Very much, but what has he got and how much does he think they're worth?

[flat4alfa]

39 minutes ago, eddyramrod said:

Very much, but what has he got and how much does he think they're worth?

https://www.facebook.com/Weird-wonderful-brierley-hill-565925800145923/

[Heidel_Kakao]

1 hour ago, eddyramrod said:

Very much, but what has he got and how much does he think they're worth?

I got all these for £20. Don't know if that's good or not. 50p per small loose car.

[bunglebus]

Bought this for 50p at the boot sale a couple of weeks ago, more as a wheel donor than anything else. Then I took pity on it

headlights are dressmaking pins with a flat filed on them and a jewel stuck on. I've had the Hot Wheels co-mold wheels for ages waiting for the right car to put them on

and with an old friend 

[Datsuncog]

9 minutes ago, Heidel_Kakao said:

I got all these for £20. Don't know if that's good or not. 50p per small loose car.

50p a throw sounds a reasonable enough price to me, given they're from a shop with overheads to cover - the big Matchbox Scammell Wrecker, the Maisto/MC Toys Suzuki SJ, big Corgi FX4 Taxi and the Siku Jeeps all look well worth the price charged. Good haul!

[flat4alfa]

Despite my disappointment, did get something yesterday at Big Car Boot

A 50p TATA NANO by Centy Toys.  Centy Toys are an Indian brand, so probably not many of you have one of these....  or maybe you do

All-plastic and measures to 1/24 scale.

ICYDY, the Nano was in production 2008-2018 and the cheapest car ever by breaking the price point of 1 Lakh (£1700).   Trouble was, because of the the increased wealth across India, many didn't want to be associated with 'cheapness' and kept their Tuk-Tuks going instead.

Check out the parcel shelf ICE.  Probably not the bASe level trim this one then.

Either way, Ken likes it because it matches his trousers.

[Datsuncog]

A further recent arrival (and probably the last one for a while) - 1979 issue Corgi Volkswagen Polo, in very of-its-time metallic green.

I formerly had one of these, boxed, and sold it for something stupid like £3 in the mid-90s.

I like the slightly rubbish illustration on the back; strange that sometimes Corgi used press pics of the real car to illustrate their boxes, sometimes photos of the toys, sometimes 'artist impressions' like this one, and sometimes ads for other stuff in the range entirely.

The eBay seller claimed this one had "never been out of the box".

They could be right, as the box end flaps were very crisp and showing no signs of wear, but it's out of the box now.

Clear plastic strip thing keeping the bootlid up could be original, it's true.

Side profile's not bad.

I think these Polos looked better balanced than their Juniors counterpart, which always looked a smidge wide and underwheeled.

Fun fact: diecast toy manufacturers didn't just measure up a real life car and then scale everything down by, say, 1/36. According to the Great Book Of Corgi, this would only ever produce a model that looked far too skinny, because people are used to seeing real cars from eye level, but toys are seen from above. So most toy cars were modelled slightly wider than they were in reality, and how much wider was down to the designer and whatever they thought looked 'right'.

The Corgi Juniors Jag XJS was an example of where maybe they went a bit too far the other way...

But anyway.

The paint masking's been quite well done on this one, too.

It's kind of a pity that Corgi didn't really go in for number plate stickers the way Dinky did; a pair of GB plates on a T-reg would certainly have made this one really pop. Though as a left-hooker, was Corgi chasing export markets?

Base moulding is reasonably well detailed and all.

Corgi produced this one in various imaginary rally liveries too, and later cast in a deeper front air dam, but I'm quite happy with the boring version.

More fun fact: £2.39 in 1979 equates to £12.36 in today's money. Dear enough...

[flat4alfa]

1 hour ago, Heidel_Kakao said:

I got all these for £20. Don't know if that's good or not. 50p per small loose car.

The short-can Johnson motor in the Scalextric car is worth quite a bit more than 50p if someone is in need of one

[egg]

On 18/07/2021 at 16:09, AndyW201 said:

we have the fantastic* normally aspirated 1.8 Endura-DE diesel

At least it was a better engine than the MK4 1.6D - 50-60 bhp?

[flat4alfa]

23 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

was Corgi chasing export markets?

Probably

[flat4alfa]

53 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

Though as a left-hooker, was Corgi chasing export markets?

Definitely