60th Anniversary MGB

A special Christmas present from Kieron in the form of a yellow MGB in Scalextric's 60th Anniversary range.

Scalextric are celebrating their 60th Anniversary with the release of a special collectors' series of cars, each in special edition packaging and featuring a 60th Anniversary holographic logo on the car. Only 250 pieces of each model will be released.

This MGB is from the Thoroughbred Sports Car Series and is driven by Roy McCarthy.  Roy and his two sons, Russell and Spencer, formed McCarthy Motorsport using Roy’s knowledge and expertise with MGs.  Over the years, the family took hundreds of podiums and class wins across many historic racing championship classes.  Sadly, Roy passed away in 2010 but his sons continue to race with Russell recently winning the Thoroughbred Sportscar Championship in 2015.

I'm shocked to discover this is only my fifth blog this calendar year.  This hobby has definitely taken a back seat in the last year or two.  Here's hoping I get more time with the cars in 2018.

More of Andy's spectators

Andy has been busy painting the dozens of people I got him for Christmas.  Here's the advanced work in progress on his painting bench:

And here they are sat on Andy's home-made straw bales:

And seated in a couple of grandstands built from the MDF flatpack kits from Magnetic Racing:

Using the track again

Stuart visited today so we had a morning of slot car racing, including the first race with the Mazda 787B that I personalised for him a couple of years ago.  I had my own Mazda in a stealthy matt black but it was beaten to the podium by Stuart's car.

Unusually no major damage to report.  A couple of lights to glue back on a pair of the BMW 2002 saloon cars.  We did roll the 4x4s quite a lot though...

Must do some more racing now it's warmer in the loft!

The final camera car?

I've been hunting for this car at a good price for a long while.

It's a very limited edition Ford GT40 from Fly representing one of the camera cars used in Steve McQueen's movie "Le Mans".

The car had it's roof chopped and cameras were mounted in a variety of positions for filming the racing in the movie.

The presentation box comes with a booklet and a DVD with three features about "Le Mans".

This car was only available to those who had bought all five of the other cars in this set and collected the tokens needed.  The five sets were:

• Porsche 911S Targa Florio 1972/DVD 'The Speed Merchants' (Fly 99020)
• Porsche 908/2 Jarama 6hr 1970/DVD 'Jo Siffert Live fast die young' (Fly 99035)
• Porsche 917K Buenos Aires 1000k 1971/DVD 'Las temporadas Argentinas' (Fly 99036)
• Porsche 911RSR Targa Florio 1973/DVD '100 Anni di Targa Florio' (Fly 99037)
• Ford GT40 24Hrs Daytona 1967/DVD 'The GT40 Story' (Fly 99038)

I have the first of these as it is another car mounted with a camera, and was also the last slot car I bought, almost two years ago (I definitely prefer to make my own these days).  

I believe I now have each of the four commercially available slot cars with film cameras mounted on them.  The other two are also cars used to film "Le Mans": the Porsche 917 and Porsche 908.  The four together make a nice collection and are out on display - I don't think the cameras would last long being raced on my circuit.

Final photo features Steve McQueen and the GT40 camera car:

Swindon Swapmeet

A belated write-up of the annual swapmeet at Swindon that Andy and I visited last month.  We didn't have a table this year, given the success of selling our unwanted cars over the last few years.

The highlight was a new set of 1/32 buildings from Magnetic Racing.  Fortunately, I don't have any space left on my layout or else I could have spent quite a lot, but Andy bought a building and gave them lots of advice on what he wanted them to design next!

In the end I only spent a few quid with the bargain of the show being a box of figures and accessories for £3 which included a vintage tyre rack.