Slot car addiction
For this issue, sat down to talk with Dominic Grimes, president of the Australian Scalextric Racing and Collecting Club. Dominic also describes himself as a slot car ‘custodian,’ so his views on slot car collecting are informative and entertaining.
I see a lot of collections, and to me a collection can be 10, 20, or maybe 2000 cars. It’s whatever somebody has as their thing. It may be a particular driver they saw race back in the day. And that’s why collecting is a great part of the hobby – it makes the hobby very social.You might be at someone’s place for a race, and you get to see their collection of slot cars and you have a chin-wag and a beer about the stories behind them. Some are for racing, and some are for display only. Personally I have both.
I guess collections are what you want to buy and whether someone makes them. It’s a big part of the hobby, especially for the manufacturers trying to make sales in a tough market, and that applies to Australia. Later this year we will see six Scalextric cars come out just for Australia with ve ‘70s muscle cars that will be fantastic scale race cars of the real thing, including the 1979 Bathurst-winning Torana A9X Hatchback. Credit should go to Scalextric and Southern Model Supplies for this.
Probably 80 percent of the time I buy Scalextric. They have a good design and are well made. I don’t really want to tinker too much to have a car that needs its running gear to be replaced to race well. But in the last 10 years the number of manufacturers has really grown, so the choice is amongst the best ever and a great time to get into the hobby. For me, it will depend on the cars I want – for instance, SCX made an Erebus Mercedes Bathurst 12 Hour car that noone else made, so I have that.
I am in a lucky position to see a lot of collections. As well as being the president of the ASRCC, I trade in cars as a hobby under the banner of Slot Cars Alive. I buy collections people are looking to dispose of, keep a number of them and try to nd homes for many. I’ve been doing it long enough now that people let me know what cars they are after, and their price range. If the car nds me you get rst choice with no obligation to buy. I don’t often make much out of it - my enjoyment is helping so many enthusiasts complete their collections and creating more interest in the hobby.
The Bob Jane Camaro is a really good example and one I love. It came in two liveries and I’ve probably had both cars about ten times, and often traded them on. Some will be mint-in-box and others have been raced. As they were limited editions of 1500 each, the prices quickly went up and have stayed there
in the 15 years since released. Same with the Moffat Coke Mustang.
In terms of impressive collections, there are large ones, but it is the interesting ones that I really like. A friend had a complete collection of every Police car Scalextric ever released, which ends up being 50 or 60 cars. It took a lot of time and effort to put together. He started out buying what was available, and he had to add to as new ones were released which wasn’t too onerous. But then he had to spend time to go back and
nd them all, so it was actually a bit of a project, and you are committed to it going forward.
One of those cars has a real story – a Police car from Jersey in the UK. I bought it for my collection when I was on a trip to the UK about seven years ago. It got added to his Police collection and then I got it back when he didn’t want the collection earlier this year. Then a collector from Jersey posted on Facebook that he was after this speci c car, and I had it sitting there waiting for the right person to come along. So now it is back in Jersey where the real car was used in service.
Another friend has a collection of around 2000 cars, which is impressive and a real conversation starter whenever you go around to his man-cave.
On a sadder note, a former president of the club had an extensive collection in boxes. When he passed away, Club members got together to help his family nd new homes for them, which was a huge project – never seen so many slot cars sell in one day! It was a quality collection with a lot of desirable cars. Whilst it is still sad missing a good friend, the small positive is all those cars ended up with 100 or more different people, improving the quality of their collections and prompting conversations often with the query ‘was that one of John’s?’
Currently the V8 Supercars are really on the up, some huge prices on those now. Quite a few people have made a special effort to get hold of each one. We have another one coming out this year – the Lowndes/Whincup 2019 Bathurst car.
The Scalextric Torana L34 and A9X and Falcon XB and XCs are also notable collectables in themselves and are achieving higher than original prices.
The Bob Jane Camaro is one of my favourites. I collect Jane cars, I call his Camaros ‘Bobs’ – I love seeing Bob go around. I so wish Scalextric would also do Bob’s Mk II Jaguar. The ‘Bob’ I race actually has four different chassis, depending on the class rules. The fact that a new Bob is coming out is fantastic; I’ll be adding a few to my collection for sure. There a few people who feel it is going to affect the collectors’ market for the prior two, it might, but I also think it is going to increase interest. Being a likely 1,500 only just for Australia continues the theme from 15 years ago too. If it was a re-release of the previous livery, then yes I would have been very disappointed.
That is a tough one. You have to recognise that a car made in say, 1985, is 35 years old! Slot cars are mostly plastic and rubber, so tyres fall apart and pinions crack, but they are xable. A bit of oil and a tweak of the braids, and generally they run well again. Thankfully in Australia we are lucky to have MJK making a wide range of tyres for almost every car.
Ian Stewart
Taswegian reader Ian Stewart got in contact with AMC after our Craven Wild cover story in issue # 116. Ian was at Symmons Plains when the Morris/Grice Commodore made its race debut in early 1980, and fortunately for us he’d brought along his Kodak tele instamatic camera (anyone remember those?). We’ll let Ian tell the story:
“The weather was rubbish that weekend, but I was totally looked forward to seeing the ‘new generation’ Group C cars. In the pits, I made a beeline for the new ‘dream team’ and was impressed. The two cars looked great and I managed to get pics of them both and side by side and individually. I had to admit that the (few) Commodores looked really plain, and it wasn’t until later in the year when they were changed to the VC with some body add-ons that they began to look the part.
Your article on the event also mentioned the two new XD Falcons of Murray Carter and Garry Willmington. They looked fantastic! The open exhausts of Group C always sounded great, but Garry’s car that year was probably the best sounding Group C car I ever heard. In the black-and-white pics on page 42 of the mag, you can see both Carter’s and Wilmington’s cars.
But with the Grice Torana SS5000, there is a common thread to another previous Group C shape appearing at Symmons for that event and others throughout 1980. That was the Bill O’Brien/ Ray Winter XC. I’d seen it at Symmons in 1979 (my pic shows John Harvey passing it) and oddly enough it didn’t have the bonnet scoop in that event, but it did for ‘79 Bathurst. Bill O’Brien drove at Symmons in that event, but both the XC and Carter’s XD seem to be sharing the transporter. Ray Winter had previously driven with Carter at Bathurst, so maybe that was the tie-up.
And then, in the ultimate joining of the dots which come about from this really well written article, when Bob Morris left the Craven Mild team prior to Bathurst, who does he team up with for Bathurst-Bill O’ Brien in an XD Falcon!
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