You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess

Carrera, the German equivalent of Scalextric, was founded in 1963 and so celebrated 50 years of slot car production last year.  They had a couple of commemorative products but the one that caught my eye was a collaboration with Yello, the Swiss electronic band, who would be my single choice of music on my desert island.  I've had this car on pre-order since July and it finally arrived last week (51 years after the founding of Carrera...).

The car is a Shelby Cobra 289, appropriately enough a 1963 model.  The pre-production model had high detail models of Dieter Meier and Boris Blank and "Yello" in a gold script.

The production car has Dieter holding a spanner rather than a microphone stand, "Yello" in red script, and the gorilla image from the cover of 1983's "You Gotta Say Yes To Another Excess" only on the flanks not the bonnet.  But still a really unusual car celebrating my favourite hobby and favourite band!

The tyre labelling "Bostich" refers to their first big hit.

UK Slot Car Festival

Andy and I attended the UK Slot Car Festival at the Heritage Motor Centre yesterday.  As we got near the venue, we were seeing more and more classics on the road, and on arrival found that as well as the Slot Car Festival, it was also the Gaydon Spring Classic that day.

We had a wander around the classic cars (although our favorite cars we saw were the new Jaguar F-Type and Toyota GT-86 in the visitor car park!) but the Alpina was particularly nice.

Plus a nice Capri and classic Lotus wedge.

It was also the 40th anniversary of the Austin Allegro (or "all agro" as my Dad used to call his).

There were several dozen Allegros gathered - I'd be surprised if it wasn't most if not all of those still on the road.

The actual slot car festival was good too!  It gets bigger every year (I only realised on getting home and looking properly at the programme, that we missed three of the rooms!).

Following the delivery of a Carrera car this week (Carrera is to Germany what Scalextric is to the UK), I was on the look out for other Carrera models.  They are detailed cars, good to race and cheaper than Scalextric.  I'd bought a Ferrari 456 earlier this week (my favourite Ferrari after the 250GTO):

And I found a bargain Shelby Cobra at the show:

I found another couple of rare Carrera cars right as we were about to leave the show but I can't blog about those yet as I've passed them to Louise to give them me for my birthday :-)

I also bought a good example of a motorbike and sidecar combination.  Andy has lots of these but this is the first I've bought.  It drives rather well.

Lastly, I bought an assortment of spares, a couple of flat-pack marshall huts and a bodyshell for a conversion project I have in mind.  A great day out!