Thursday, August 10, 2006

Need scenery? Consider diecasts.

Recently I've been on the lookout for cars to populate my track, the San Francisco Grand Prix, over the past year I've found a selection of cars that fit that motif very well.

There are a surprising number of 1/32 diecast cars for sale many on ebay, but if you have a look around during a streetfair or car show or flea market you'll find lots of cars to spend your money on. Most of these cars were purchased during events, not on ebay.

The first diecast to make the scene was the taco truck. This truck was actually purchased from eBay after SCI member Mark Belles (where has he been BTW?) pointed it out on a thread about his track.


It's a good model, although a bit narrow. And I have to dirty this truck up a bit, I've never seen a real taco truck so clean!

The truck came with the small picnic table and chairs... no the Homies didn't come with this one. The table and chairs are really very small, but I really don't care, these fall into the close enough for $15.00 catagory.

The interior even has a kitchen to prepare the tacos for the "customers".


About a month ago I was working, photographing a festival and I picked up this Alfa. I was happy to only have to spend $3.00 on this one. There were other cars in the box that were marked "1/32" but this was the only body with sort of the right proportions. And you really can't go wrong for $3.00 now can you?


Well what can I say, I'm making a city so you have to have mail delivery now don't you.
I picked this one up at a car show in Norwalk Conn. for only $5.00! Since then I've seen this for sale on eBay for over $10.00..guess I got a deal, well sort of anyway. It's a really pretty nice Grumman mail truck, it's sort of on the large side but that's fine. It sits at one end of the track as a kind of space filler anyway.

The lowrider I've shown before. I bought this one at WalMart for $12.00...which is an personal high-water mark for diecast purchases until recently. The name of the company that produced this escapes me now. I had the box for a while, which had the website of the company on it. But I checked the URL listed and it didn't work. I guess they went out of business, which is a shame this is a really cool car IMO.

And now my new favorite diecast a Scion xB!

I've been looking high and low for a static model of the xB to make into a slot car. While surfing eBay a few weeks ago I came across this and did a "buy it now" as quickly as my fingers would let me. I paid $10.00 for this plus something like $4.00 to ship it. Which was fine since I had to have it...I'm hoping to get one of these in the next few months (a real one).

It's taken about a year to get these cars together to help fill out the scenery on my track, and I've seen lots of terrible cars that I didn't get. But with some patience...not something I'm known for BTW...I'm pretty happy with the collection so far.

DaveK
Publisher, Slot Car News

3 comments:

DaveKennedy said...

Oh, just wait next week I'm getting a shipment of Greek fig leaves to scatter about!

I forgot to metion that my son really loves playing with these too. It diverts his attention from the slot cars. He's already packed the Scion full of his dinner (marinated pork), the Alfa got filled with cheese, the taco truck was spaghetti, and the mail truck was cookies! Thank goodness they're cheap, eh?

Robert Livingston said...

I'm still weighing whether I should

1) Take photos of my 1/32 static models on the race track (some diecasts, some plastic kits)

or,

2) Pack my cars full of cheese.

DaveKennedy said...

Well Shawn you can never have too many mail trucks...maybe you can sell one?