A beautiful Buick ambulance in 1/18 scale ... Every kid of the 1950s and 1960s remembers the extremely long brightly colored ambulances of the day, either from seeing them as they ran our city’s streets with lights flashing and sirens blaring, or from TV shows of the day. Cadillac ambulances with their big tailfins were popular to... Continue Reading →
Die-cast: NEO 1966 Pontiac GTO Convertible
Pontiac GTO Convertible = crisp, muscular model ... Those of us of a certain age used to worship (or close to it) muscle cars in the 1960s, and many credit Pontiac with launching the idea of a muscular mid-size car that the masses could afford. Pontiac’s first was the 1964 Tempest with the GTO package... Continue Reading →
Die-cast: Replicarz’s 1964 Indy Smokey Yunick sidecar racer
PRE-RELEASE REVIEW: Sidecar racer unique, weird, unsuccessful, but a cool die-cast model ... The mid-1960s were a wild and revolutionary time for race car design and technology at the Indianapolis 500, the predominant race in the world at the time. The era saw roadsters with their engines in the front replaced by racers, such as Lotuses, with... Continue Reading →
Die-cast: Automodello’s 1966 Ford Galaxie 500
Rare 7-Liter Hardtop beautiful in 1/24 scale ... As a kid I saw a lot of Ford Galaxies around the neighborhood and some of my northern Indiana relatives who farmed had them and weren’t afraid to run them out in a cornfield if necessary. But rarer was the Galaxie 500 7-Liter Hardtop, a luxury model that wasn’t... Continue Reading →
Die-cast: NEO’s 1933 Cadillac Fleetwood All-weather Pheaton
'33 Cadillac Fleetwood long on style ... There have been some fine luxury cars made in the United States, exemplary machines that set the auto world on its proverbial ear. Pierce-Arrow, Packard, Duesenberg, Auburn and Cadillac come to mind. Only Cadillac is left, but that’s because GM kept it alive through the Great Depression when it... Continue Reading →
Die-cast: Auto World’s 1957 Ford Thunderbird
1957 T-bird wonderful in white! ... Early Thunderbirds were a lovely blend of two-seater styling and boulevard cruiser with dandy hooded headlights and tiny jet-like fins on the tail. This was Ford’s effort to Americanize the sports car market that the British car makers had created after World War II, and it worked. Thunderbirds were... Continue Reading →
Big cash for small cars
A tale of two companies It all began almost 67 years to the date in a closed down pub in London where an industrial die-casting company, Lesney, was born, leading to a huge collector market for metal 1/64th scale model cars. Lesney is the creator of Matchbox vehicles. The name itself came into being when one... Continue Reading →
Die-cast: Replicarz’s 1968 STP Chevy C10 & tandem race trailer
Truck, trailer and 'Mr. 500' make racy display ... Collectors who like to create scenes for displaying their models will be thrilled by three new items from Replicarz, a 1968 Chevy C10 pickup and tandem race trailer, plus a figure of Andy Granatelli. All are sold separately, so you can create your own diorama to... Continue Reading →
Die-cast: Chevy Corvette C7 Z06
Autoart creates a stellar Corvette C7 Z06 ... Vettes are cool even if their current buyers are skewing gray and retired. Still, you gotta have a little coin to own a new Vette, especially the Z06 model, one of the racier versions. A new one will cost you $79,500, so that’s why Autoart’s 1/18 scale... Continue Reading →
Die-cast: Auto World’s 1968 Olds Cutlass 442 W-30
Olds' Cutlass 442 was a beautiful beast ... One of the cars I learned to drive on was our family’s 1969 Oldsmobile Cutlass S – no power steering and a big throbbing V8 under its long hood. The car was a beast, but beautiful dressed in its Aztec Gold paint scheme. For that matter, the... Continue Reading →