Slot car addiction

Doubling-down on nostalgia

When I was a little chap, I received the rst slot car set that sent me down the road to my slot addiction. It was a modest but useful set, with a gureeight track, a mechanical lap-counter and two Ferrari Dinos that eventually wore out. As a result, my father took me for a trip to the local hobby store, where we purchased a pair of kit slot cars to replace the knackered Ferraris. It was a long time ago, but I remember one was a Lotus, perhaps a 30, and the other was most de nitely an E-type Jaguar convertible. Buying slot car kits that you assembled yourself was all part and parcel of the original slot car boom of the 1960s.

Fast forward to 2008, and one of the famous American brands from those boom times, Monogram, was re-issuing build-it yourself slot car kits. In fact, the Ferrari 275P in this column was rst issued in 1964 by MRRC. A few years ago I picked up what I thought was one of the last of this more recent issue. I made some improvements and turned it into the Le Manswinning Ferrari 275P from 1964, driven by Nino Vaccarella and Jean Guichet.

Since then my collection of Le Mans winners has expanded dramatically and I was kicking myself for not buying two, as the body is identical to the 1963 Le Mans-winning 250P of Lorenzo Bandini and Ludovico Scar otti. From time-to-time I scan through internet slot car stores looking for something interesting and, lo-and-behold, I stumbled across some new-old stock Monogram Ferraris on a US website – happy days!

A look at the packaging shows Monogram was targeting the current boom in slot cars, for the images on the box are very reminiscent of the 1960s. However, several things tell you this is a modern product, including the holographic sticker demonstrating that this is an officially-licensed Ferrari product, the details of Monogram being (in 2008) owned by Revell GmbH of Germany, and ‘Made In China’! How times have changed since those early days.

I didn’t just buy this kit for the nostalgia, but because it has the potential to be a reasonably accurate representation of a Ferrari 250P. If you take a close look at slot cars older than this kit, they can be fairly disappointing. At that time, scale seemed to be something to do with sh, and the components were a little crude. More laughably, cars like Scalextric’s Dick Johnson 1995 Shell Falcon was merely a repainted Modeo. Thankfully Southern Models have since stepped in, created a partnership with Scalextic in the UK, and overseen the production of some great Aussie touring cars.

The body in this kit is what makes it worthwhile today, being close enough to the real thing. The chassis is also competent, being very similar to most of the adjustable plastic versions available today. A few things leave room for improvement, however, including the decals with their black outlines, cockpit area and the clunky chrome wheels. All of these things can be xed with modern replacements.

The rst step was to order some replacement decals from Patto’s Place. As I did with the

Bentley a few issues ago, the old decals were rubbed off with a metho-soaked cotton bud. The new ones came from a generic Ferrari set – most 1960s Ferrari Le Mans racers were numbered between 19 and 24, so I already had those on hand as leftovers from other Ferrari projects.

The cockpit was next, and a study of images of real 275Ps shows up areas where this slot car kit is a bit toy-like. Monogram made the cockpit with a very shallow tray in order to leave room for the inline motor. As a result, the driver gure only has a pair of shoulders – his arms are cast into the tray with half a steering wheel. That might be okay in a closed car, but with this spyder body, it really stands out as a compromise. Doing a trial assembly of the car showed that there is actually enough room to increase the cockpit depth from three to eight millimetres. It doesn’t sound like much, but it opens up room for extra detail.

I used the original tray as the oor and relined the sides with plasticard. Sprayed in silver, it looks much more like the aluminium interior of a Ferrari and there was now enough depth to add seat backs and show more of the steering wheel. The dash and the back of the cockpit mirror were the colour of other pieces of the kit, so I resprayed them in the correct matte black. A full-sized driver gure was sourced from the Pioneer spares catalogue, and trimmed to suit the space available.

The wheels in the kit are budget items cast in plastic and coated in imitation chrome. To add the nishing touch, I swapped them out for a set of aluminium PCS classic wire wheels from Pendleslot in the UK. All that remained was to then assemble the remainder of the Ferrari with the supplied pieces. It now sits alongside my other Le Mans winners in a collection that spans from the ’50s through to the ’90s.

Kits like this Monogram are a rarity these days as they are not a big seller. I’ve seen Fly kit cars sit on the shelves of some stores for 10 years, as it seems most people expect to buy ready to run cars. I guess it’s just a sign of the times – nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

While we are on the topic of Monogram, US slot car distributor Professor Motor has acquired the rights to reproduce Monogram products. Among their recent re-releases are the ‘63 Ford Galaxie and ‘65 Fairlane bodies for those who do want to build their own cars. Prices on new-old stock NASCAR Galaxies were getting a bit expensive, but with these bodies available once more, now might be the time to build a replica of the old Galaxie Lex Davison crashed so spectacularly at Sandown.