Also in my garage
Making memories all over again with a reborn model collection that has spiralled
There’s always room for more cars: it’s just a matter of scale. In his day job as head of editorial for Car & Classic, Chris Pollitt deals with the real thing all day, every day – but his flat is rammed with diecast models of all makes, models and hues.
“I’m not really a nerdy collector,” he claims. “It all started for a good reason. When I was 18 or 19 we lost our house and everything in it. I hated the thought of all those memories being gone, so about five years later I started buying the old cars I remembered having.”
Them and a couple of thousand more. Pollitt reckons he now has about 2500 diecasts, of which 1600 are Hot Wheels, most of them still mint and still in their blister-packs. “The Hot Wheels stuff started about 12 years ago,” he explains. “It’s easy to put one or two in your shopping basket when they’re only 99p each. If I come back without one there’s something wrong! Then I got into the limited editions…
“The thing is, Hot Wheels doesn’t tell you that they’re limited. You only find out by looking them up afterwards. I’ve got a green Focus RS that was only 99p from Halfords but I could get £100 for it if I put it on ebay, and a GT40 in gold with rubber tyres, instead of the usual Gulf colours. It would fetch about the same but it was £1.50 from B&M. Collectors go mad for them.
“There’s a huge sub-culture in modifying them – people will cut the doors out with a jeweller’s saw so they open, that kind of thing. I’ve painted a couple, such as the Mercedes W124 that started out as a police car but is now Bornite, as per my old 230E.
“I only collect the real cars, though Hot Wheels does some cartoon creations. They’re well modelled, such as the Porsche 356s and 911s and even some American gassers. They’re signed off by real petrolheads over at Hot Wheels HQ, and it shows in the models.”
Rarities include a Capri 2.8i by Vanguard, modelled on the project car owned by Retro Ford when Pollitt worked for the magazine, and a Dodge Dakota pick-up: “I couldn’t put that one down when I was a kid – it was my favourite. The older stuff I have, such as the Dodge, has meaning. It’s tied to a memory.”
There’s a significance to the road cars, too: “I’ve got a Rover 800 Vitesse turbo – my ongoing headache. When I was 16 my boss had one in red – it was a real rocketship, and I said I’d have one eventually. It’s a clone of the one I bought 12 years ago that only worked for seven days out of the seven months I had it. I drove past this one every day for about 10 years until it disappeared. When it popped up on ebay, I had to bid. It was £475, but it owes me a lot more now. And before Christmas someone gave me a Citroën ZX Volcane – a rare one because it’s a petrol. It drives really well for a car that was sitting for four years, but there’s still lots of work to do.”
There are a few larger models built from kits, such as the 1:32 Revell Torino: “On the box of course it was shown as the Starsky & Hutch ‘flying tomato’, but I thought it would look better in Roman Bronze. The older American stuff, with a simple layout and exposed propshaft etc is a good way to teach kids how cars work.
“I don’t covet the collection, and they’re not on display, though I suppose one day they might be worth something. When I have space, I’ll show them off. Until then, I’m just one of those sad people who never goes out because he’s painting his model cars. But I’m okay with that.”