Nostalgia.
Your correspondent is still broken and what might be described as “sub-optimal”, so has resorted to lazy nostalgia to fill this page rather than dreaming up a race report. There’s a tenuous link though; the nostalgia is Formula 1, specifically Scalextric’s and its single-seaters. And if you’re really desperate for race details, they’re at the bottom of the page.
Who doesn’t get misty-eyed about at least some of the following, which for some will have been their introduction to the glorious world of slot cars and racing them?
1962 – Scalextric’s suggestion for a “Thrill Packed Club Circuit“
1969 – “SCALEXTRIC IS REAL MOTOR RACING”
Scalextric produced a model of a Formula 3 McLaren M4A. The previous year they’d sponsored the Chequered Flag racing team, the team running McLaren M4As.
1989 – Scalextric’s epic Ferrari F1/87
It took another thirty years for NSR to come along and breathe some life into a classic with their Formula 86/89 cars.
1990 – McLaren Honda MP4/4
Scalextric’s F1/87 playmate and surely one of Scalextric’s greatest cars. Or at least it would have been, had Scalextric not ‘forgotten’ to ask permission from, and/or pay a licence fee to, McLaren before producing the bodies and consequently been forced to scrap those that had been made.
This was a period when the English and Spanish Scalextric brands were separate firms but would sometimes collaborate, swapping bodies and fitting their country’s own wheels, motors and grubby bits, and so it was with this particular car. The Spanish version was stickered and wore Alain Prost’s number 11, but the English version was much more desirable, being tampo printed rather than stickered and carrying Ayrton Senna’s number 12.
As is often the way with factory scrappage, instead of being scrapped, the stuff merely disappears out of the factory’s back door and magically reappears somewhere else, and within six months the same was true of Senna’s beauty, hundreds of cars turning up for sale at various swapmeets and toy fairs. Your correspondent somehow acquired two…
Turn your noses up at Scalextric’s current offerings all you like, I won’t disagree, but its Ferrari F1/87 and McLaren MP4/4 should have a place in the heart of any true slot racer.
