Redline Thunder

A long love love affair began with the small purple car above. From the moment I saw the Mattel Hot Wheels advert on tv showing the fast race cars speeding across the floor and down the orange track (even though the pictures were all black and white) and came across the fabulously flamboyant packets with the beautifully coloured cars in, I was gone. Hooked. Sold. End of.

Frequent trips to the Anchor Stores on Park Road in Dingle, every Saturday morning with my dad to gaze in rapt wonder at the huge window full of Aurora and Revell kits and the huge range of Major Matt Mason toys, punctuated by brightly coloured red and yellow packets of Hot Wheels cars. Hot Wheels were always more expensive than the lesser Matchbox models and it was some time before I managed to pester my dad into shelling out for the Deora. A flat futuristic slab of a car with orange and yellow surfboards on the back, it was poles apart from the dull sedans and boring trucks that Lesney were making at the time.The Deora was designed by Harry Bentley Bradley and was one of the more radical designs featured in the original sixteen models. Recently it was brought back as a more rounded version as Deora 2 and also as the chunkier version Deora above.

 

Following hot on the heels of the Deora and the first range came other amazing designs such as the Lotus Turbine, Shelby Turbine and Indy Eagle above. Among the first cars to come along were the Splittin' Image and the Swingin' Wing - fabulous designs that broke the mold in terms of car design. The white Splittin Image below is a recent reissue.

 Another early Bradley design was the Silhouette, which also made it into real life courtesy of Bill Cushenberry.

This memorable car was also produced by Zylemex as the 'Brute' in a larger scale. I picked up a rather battered version on ebay recently, missing an intake, some fairings and with a spectacular bash in the perspex cockpit! Any advice on how I might repair that would be most welcome!

Finally, two more fixer uppers, the Regal Eagle and Maching Bird, obscured under several layers of hobby paint, beginning to reveal their original spectraflame colours after a good rub down with Brasso (thanks Paul)!