[Anthony B]

Prompted by next years Bordo theme, what are your favourite open wheeled vehicles?

Lol - I have a few  

   

   

   

   

   

   

These last 2 are ESPECIALLY for Gordon!!!

   

[Anthony B]

I also have these 2

They are not great representations of the real cars, but they were close to the first ones done - Airfix Cooper and Ferrari sharknose,  upgraded a little...

   

   

   

   

Gordon - thinking of you .... I focused on the green car

[woodcote]

   

Open wheels cars in HO are tricky - the standard chassis are relatively big and bulky. The AFX Mega-G chassis came along in 2008 and gave the potential for some nice low open wheelers. AFX have only produced one shape so far - the Panoz DP01 ChampCar - but this is a fabulous FastBodies resin model of the Lola-Buick driven by John Andretti at the 1989 Indy 500. Gary Fast has produced some lovely resin HO open-wheelers (mostly Indy cars) and this was my entry in a competition he ran a few years ago. The kit comes as the high-downforce road course version and I changed it to look like the car that ran at Indianapolis.

   

In contrast, I give you two Micro Scalextric F1 cars from 1995. These are bigger than 1/64 scale and still look extremely bulky in comparison to the Lola!

   

[Anthony B]

Love that Lola Buick - can you show us a comparative look at the chassis?

[Gordon Steadman]

I don't have a single open wheeled car! Not even a Ferrari!

I think I have an inline Dynamic somewhere or I might have to build one specially. 32nd is OK of course, just bung an Atlas or Pittman in. I won't be doing balsa next year. Something light, low and as wide as possible.

Some of the driving this year was dreadful, the marshals at the bridge were kept very busy indeed. I can just imagine what all those interlocking wheels will be like

[Scuderia_Turini]

Vittorio Jano's finest hour - 

   

John Surtees era at Ferrari -

   

[woodcote]

Love that Lola Buick - can you show us a comparative look at the chassis?

I will do! However, I am over in mainland Europe at the moment - separated from my slot cars. There is this graphic I did for the club, but it only shows top and bottom views. 

   

It’s the height that is important for the open wheel cars - the highest point of the Mega-G is the top of the armature stacks, everything else is as low as possible. The 1970s-80s Aurora G+ (Gravity Plus) was the original AFX in-line chassis and was nice and low. There were some fabulous late 70s and early 80s Formula One bodies produced by Aurora in the US and Faller in Germany. Some are worth a lot of cash these days. I will post pics of a couple when I get home (neither are rare or valuable!).

[CMOTD]

Vastly overpriced and totally useless as slot cars but I don't care - a model my all time favourite F1 duel, Arnoux vs Villeneuve at the 1979 French Grand Prix:
                                                                              

[Scuderia_Turini]

Beautiful cars !