Garage Kit

One of my Xmas gifts this year was this cool garage display box for diecasts. It’s a simple kit of three pieces of MDF with acrylic windows. The ceiling has a built in LED strip powered by a cable with a USB connector, mine didn’t work when it arrived, so I stripped the connector off and found a standard plug adaptor from a set of defunct Xmas tree lights. At 10” long and 6” deep, it comfortably sits three standard die casts.

Another Xmas treat was a larger line from Hot Wheels - Pull Back Speeders. These are a separate range of motorised cars at 1:43 scale, with an average size of about 4-5”. I got a couple for Xmas and have bought a few more on eBay recently. The Alpha Pursuit Police Car is a futuristic design, with large opening doors, but a surprisingly cramped interior. It has green lights in lieu of the usual red/blue combination, but the scheme works really well. It sits here with a standard mainliner HW, the Rogue Hog.

The 1:43 scale was a little problematic for pairing the cars with figures, online guides suggest a figure of around 38mm would be ideal, the nearest I have are 35mm Mega Rig toy figures.

Another eBay purchase is the Heavy Hitcher, a hot rodded tow truck, vaguely reminiscent of the Corgi Rockets Holmes Wrecker. These cars all have a pull back wind up motor, which gives about 20 feet of travel on a smooth floor. The Hitcher has a moveable hook to attach to recoveries. As it would be a bigger vehicle in reality, the 1:43 scale fails here and the smaller 00/H0 figures look more natural.

A similar issue occurs with the Mercedes Benz Unimog Rally, the 35mm figures sit well with the car and could actually fit in the cabin.

One of the two Xmas gifts was this glorious Custom 68 Camaro. I do love American muscle and although I am not a fan of Mattel’s overuse of pointless decals, this is one of my favourite Speeders. I am hoping to pick up the 69 Mustang to pair with it shortly.

The second gift was the much more HW styled Fusion Busta, an over the top custom rod. This and one or two other models suffer from another Mattel foible - pointless gimmickry. As the car drives forward, a cam on the front axle makes the entire engine shake and wobble. Besides slowing down the car, it makes the detail look shoddy and loose and the exhausts and intake tilt at the slightest touch.

The initial reason I was drawn to the Speeders line was the inclusion of the Twin Mill, one of Ira Gilfords first exotic customs in the 1969 line up. Twin Mill has been in constant production in various guises to the present, with two versions being recently added to the 2025 line up.

The Speeders version is glorious and well detailed, apart from being over decalled again and suffering with the same gimmicky motor feature, both chrome engine rock about when the car moves. When I got my model, I opened it up and trimmed off the plastic trip on the dual engine block and re-seated them,so they sit firmly again. The Twin Mill first came to my attention when my 4 year old granddaughter got a hideous Barbie pink version! Luckily, Mattel had already produced a red and rarer blue version, so I didn’t have to suffer any more gimmickry!