Chaps and Chapettes,
I have this rare and strange gene that dictates whenever I see anything old, broken and rusty I simply have to buy it and pay far too much money for it. I inherited this gene from my father who has been buying toot for many many years.
Six months or so ago he really came up with a good one. Two late 1980s 1/32 scale die cast toy Trabants from the far side of the Iron Curtain. These things had somehow made their way over to the United Kingdom and had then sat in a swap for 20 years before being dug up and put up for sale at a car boot sale. The price for these highly collectable, mint condition soviet toys? 1 British Pound Sterling each. Yes, he paid £2 for these die cast toys which would be converted into a racing pair of slot cars.
This is my example:
As you can see the body arrived covered in some sort of mould and although I couldn’t photograph it the interior was full of what I assume to be dogs hair.
The original idea was to remove the interior and cut away all the mountings for the standard chassis, glue the doors shut and put a PCS-32 chassis under it with steel wheels and paint it a stupid colour. That idea quickly went out the window though when I cleaned the original body to prep it for primer and I discovered it was actually in pretty good condition. I also found that the PCS chassis slotted underneath the original interior quite nicely without the need for anything to be cut up.
So here we are:
I know it sits a fair bit higher than it should but I’m allowing myself that. One can tell arch gap wasn’t exactly at the forefront of the East German’s minds when building the real ones and with the quality of Eastern European roads at the time is it really so difficult to imagine one being lifted?
As you can see I’d also painted the interior. Just so I could add a little detail.
I’ll let you know when the two Trabants are raced. They are both completely different but both are awful, I’ll be sure to get some pictures of my Dad’s one too.
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