Mini Muscle

Elsewhere in this ne publication, the grownups in charge have been discussing the 1981 James Hardie 1000. Meanwhile, those of us who play with toy cars have surprisingly few options for models of that race. Now, when looking at models of cars that raced in Australia, my rst search item is always ‘Peter Brock.’ He was always there, always winning (or nearly so) and as such, makes a good starting point.

And so it is with this race – Classic Carlectables made just 500 examples of the Brock/Richards Commodore, releasing it in 2013. What cost about $200 then will set you back north of $600 now – not a bad investment, probably. Here’s a philosophical question for you: should Classics make more of this model available to give more collectors a chance? Doing so would massively devalue the ones already out there. But are the model makers servicing collectors or investors? Something to think about, is all.

We all know (from reading the early parts of the magazine) that Dick Johnson and John French won the shortened race. And of course, with Dick being one of the other big players of that time, their XD Falcon has been modeled. This time, it was Biante doing the deed, with the Falcon available in 1:18, 1:43 and 1:64. My own collection has only the small car, but that’s ne, as it takes up far less space. I also have another XD from that race, in the big scale. The Army

Reserve car also came from Biante – driven by Bob Muir and Ian Geoghegan, in what was the latter’s last Bathurst start. The Army car’s ‘pattern-disruptive’ paint job was spectacular – cost a lot of money at the time and caused George Shepheard, noted rally navigator, to quip that if the car went off the track, his services might be needed to nd it! I did not nd a single model of this car for sale on Ebay – hmmm.

There are also models of the Allan Moffat/Derek Bell Mazda RX7 (Biante) and I guess you could adapt the 1980 or ‘82 Camaro of Kevin Bartlett to be the ‘81 version. Bainte did the Bob Morris/John Fitzpatrick Falcon XD in 1:43 and you could get a boxed set in that scale of the three podium cars – Johnson, Morris and Moffat.

And that’s about it. I had a yarn with the Head Adult, Mr Normoyle, about the seeming underuse of the every good tools the makers have for VC Commodores and XD Falcons.

But which other cars would you make? At the time, there were really only a few big names

– Brock, Moffat,

Johnson and

Bartlett, that were in top cars. There were several a half-step or so behind, due as much to budget as anything – Garry Cooke, Clive Benson-Brown, Alan Browne, Murray Carter, Garry Willmington and so on. But it would probably be nancial suicide for anyone to go to the expense of making hundreds of models of the also-rans. With much respect for those privateers, that is – they were (and are) the backbone of all semi-professional motor sport to this day.

How good is it then, that the modern racing world allows for models of nearly all competitors to be available? Think about it – there are models of virtually every Supercar raced for the last 15 years or so out there – the sport has grown that much.

I oated the idea a while ago of the modelmakers making available ‘plain-body’ cars with sticker sheets you could apply yourself to

model some of the

privateers. For a number of reasons it was too hard to do at the time.

Over the page you’ll see Biante’s new model of

Allan Moffat’s last-ever racing car. This model tugged at the memory, and a bit of digging showed us that our favourite modelmodifying guru, Geoff Wood, had already done this car. “In 2014 I made a model of this car,” Geoff confirms. “It was for Allan’s 75th birthday, but we all said it was for the 25th anniversary of his last race. We presented him with model and, instead of a birthday cake, a ‘25th anniversary’ cake.” Either way, this model should be in every Moffat fan’s collection. Certainly I’d love one.

We also talked about the GRM Monaro project earlier. Classic Carlectables and Biante both modeled these fantastic cars – I still remember that rumbling sound, as Steve Earle would say. I was at both Bathurst 24-hour races – and what an experience!

If you can find them, these models are just wonderful – they show the production-car base of the Monaro nicely, while clearly being racers.

There are also models of the Nations Cup and Targa Tasmania cars out there. Go looking – it’s worth the time.