Leigh’s Diecast Diary

It’s 7pm and I’ve only just got back to the office after a day ‘up north’ visiting a couple of our suppliers, so today’s entry will be a short one!

I learnt today that the 1:18 Jadi Triumph Stags in white (JM98111), and red (JM98112), that were originally scheduled for delivery in May, have now only just been shipped from China, so we do not expect to see them now until the end of June.

Finally, we had our latest Minichamps delivery today and finally received the James Bond Casino Royale 1:43 two car set of the Aston Martin DBS and DB5 (P137600), as well as restocks of Valentino Rossi’s 1:12 2005 Yamaha YZR-M1, which have arrived earlier than I had expected.

It would seem that my Kimi Raikkonen jinx is still alive and well! I guess it had problems with its visa when I went to Australia, and was unable to follow me all the way out there!

I was sat at the first corner at Barcelona, and was half expecting a riot when Massa and Alonso had their moment at turn one! I thought it was just a racing incident, and was more concerned with Raikkonen once again losing a place off the start. Nine laps later it was all over for him anyway, and although it’s the sixth time I’ve seen him retire it never gets any easier!

As I’ve said though, I’m just as much an F1 fan as a Kimi fan, and there were still plenty of good stories to follow such as Hamilton taking the lead in the championship (the youngest driver ever to do so), Coulthard driving a superb race and even Super Aguri scoring their first point, courtesy of Takuma Sato. Also, as an Ayrton Senna fan since the age of nine, it was nice to see Bruno Senna win the GP2 race on Saturday afternoon.

I came back today to some unwelcome news from Minichamps. You already know that the Rossi dirty Mugello Honda (PO16186) has now been put back to August (see 11th May), but it also seems that we will only get a part-shipment of his Donington First Win Honda (PO06196) at the beginning of June.

This will not nearly be enough to cover all our pre-orders, and as ever we will operate a ‘first come, first served’ policy, and then have to wait for a second delivery to fulfil our remaining customer orders. No confirmed date has yet been given for the second delivery.

Finally, we were told some time ago that the 1:43 Mansell/Senna Silverstone taxi (P914305) would arrive with us in May. When we didn’t see it in Minichamps’ May release schedule we asked them for an update, and have now been told that the date is not correct anymore. Hopefully, we will soon be given an update on when we can expect to receive this long-awaited replica.

Leigh is currently sunning himself at the Spanish Grand Prix, but we have a couple of pieces of diecast news to tell you about.

As some of you may know, Mattel announced that they would be releasing a collection of Ferrari models to celebrate their 60th year anniversary. The collection will feature a car from each decade since the company’s inception, and were originally to be produced in Silverstone grey.

We have learnt today that this colour way has now been changed to the more traditional Ferrari red. We understand that it may be a metallic red, but we cannot guarantee this until next week. We will obviously keep you posted.

There is also some disappointing news with regards the Valentino Rossi ‘dirty’ Mugello bike, as the release date for this model has unfortunately been put back until August.

Leigh will resume his normal service on Tuesday, hopefully celebrating a Raikkonen win!

There were announcements from Minichamps, Kyosho and Spark today.

Kyosho probably won the award for the most exciting announcement, with the news that it will be replicating two variants of the Audi R8 road car in 1:18 scale. One will be blue with a silver ‘blade’ (KY9213BL), the other will be white with a black ‘blade’ (KY9213W).

Meanwhile Minichamps announced a 1:43 replica of Mika Hakkinen’s 2006 McLaren MP4/21 testcar from Barcelona (DC26499H), and a 1:18 replica of the 2005 Bentley Continental Flying Spur in metallic blue (PG139460).

Finally, Spark announced a new 1:43 replica in the form of the black Alfa Romeo 8C from this year’s Geneva motor show (SPK394).

There won’t be an entry tomorrow or on Monday as I’ve got a long weekend in Spain for my second F1 trip of the year. With the four week break in the calendar and the three way tie for the championship lead, I cannot wait for the action to start!

Hopefully Raikkonen will do better than the last time I went to the Spanish GP, 2003, when he started at the back after going off in qualifying, and rammed Pizzonia’s stalled Jaguar on the grid, so he didn’t even get over the startline and I didn’t see him race past once! That was a sad day for me!

However, the last two times I have left the country Minichamps have then decided to announce some really exciting new subjects! If that happens again I’m sure someone will fill in for me.

There was an announcement from Amalgam today, confirming that for the first time they will be able to give the McLaren Formula One team their full range of treatments. This means 1:8 cars, 1:12 nosecones and 1:4 steering wheels, which is great news.

Already set for production is a limited edition of just 50 pieces each of Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren MP4/22s from this year’s Malaysian Grand Prix in 1:8 scale (AML703 and AML704).

Within the next few weeks we’re hoping to be able to announce Amalgam’s full schedule of 2007 F1 subjects. As soon as we have this information it will be immediately added to our website, and we will do a feature in our following diecast catalogue as well.

It’s normally a couple of months between new IXO deliveries but we have just received notification of the next delivery which we should hopefully receive the week beginning 21st May.

The delivery mentioned on the 2nd May has now arrived and everything mentioned that day is now in stock.

On the new delivery, we are scheduled to get the next release in the 1:43 Ferrari F1 La Storia collection, Tony Brooks’ Ferrari 246 from the 1959 Monaco GP (IXSF09).

We are also down to get two new releases in the 1:43 Le Mans Winners collection, the 1956 Jaguar D-Type of Sanderson and Flockhart (LM1956), and the 2006 Audi R10 of Biela, Werner and Pirro (LM2006).

Since the Ayrton Senna Toleman TG183B testcar (AS026) was released, we’ve had loads of enquiries as to what numbers in the Ayrton Senna collection various other models in the series are. So, here’s the complete 1:43 Ayrton Senna collection listing for all of you out there who collect the series:

No.  Description
1.    1988 McLaren-Honda MP4/4
2.    1989 McLaren-Honda MP4/5
3.    1990 McLaren-Honda MP4/5B
4.    1992 Penske-Chevrolet Indy Testcar
5.    1991 McLaren-Honda MP4/6
6.    1992 McLaren-Honda MP4/7
7.    1994 Williams-Renault FW16
8.    1993 McLaren-Ford MP4/8
9.    1985 Lotus-Renault 97T
10.  1984 Toleman-Hart TG183B
11.  1984 Mercedes 190E Touring Car
12.  1986 Lotus-Renault 98T
13.  1984 Toleman-Hart TG184
14.  1980 & 1993 Go-Karts
15.  1987 Lotus-Honda 99T
16.  1983 Williams-Ford FW08C Testcar
17.  1984 Porsche 956K Sportscar
18.  1983 Brabham-BMW BT52B Testcar
19.  1981 Van Diemen RF81 Formula Ford Car
20.  1994 Williams-Renault FW16 with Rothmans advertising
21.  1984 Toleman-Hart TG184 Portuguese Grand Prix
22.  1983 Toleman-Hart TG183B Testcar
23.  1993 McLaren-Lamborghini MP4/8B Testcar
24.  1988 McLaren-Honda MP4/4 Japanese Grand Prix
25.  1991 McLaren-Honda MP4/6 German Grand Prix
26.  1987 McLaren-TAG MP4/3 Testcar
27?  1991 ‘Taxi’ sitting on Mansell’s Williams-Renault FW14
28?  1983 Ralt RT3 British Formula 3 Car
29?  1983 Ralt RT3 Macau Formula 3 Car
30?  1986 Ford Sierra Rally Testcar

Numbers 27 to 30 have a question mark beside the number as they haven’t been released yet, so the order of these may change when the models are actually released. I hope this helps answer many of your questions.

The more vigilant among you will have noticed that one of the 1:18 AUTOart Koenigseggs (AA79001) has now changed in colour from yellow to orange. AUTOart informed us of the change today. I think it’s a good call, orange is a colour that really works on most supercars.

We normally don’t get that excited about Kyosho 1:43 replicas, but there was a new announcement today that we had to take notice of. It was of the Porsche 911R, which we do not believe has been replicated before. It will be available in silver (KY05172S) and red (KY03172R).

We received confirmation of the next IXO delivery today, which we should see the week commencing 7th May.

The release headlining the delivery is the next instalment in the Ferrari 1:43 Formula One La Storia collection. It is Rene Arnoux’s 1983 126C3 (IXSF08).

There will also be three new releases in the Ferrari 1:43 ‘closed wheeler’ collection, the yellow F430 Challenge testcar (IXFR42) and the two 599 GTB Panamerica Tour cars, red (IXFR73) and blue (IXFR74).

Finally, there will be two long-awaited restocks in the 1:43 Le Mans Winners collection, in fact I think this is the first time I have seen restocks of these since I started as Diecast Manager just over two years ago.

These are the 1931 Alfa Romeo 8C (LM1931), and the 1989 Sauber Mercedes C9 (LM1989). It proves that, although IXO take their time manufacturing new batches of these models, they do eventually get round to it. Goodness knows when we will see another delivery of these replicas though, it could be another two years, so don’t hang about if you’re waiting to add these to your collection.

OK, I’ll admit it, I was wrong on Wednesday! (See 25th April). The 1:43 1983 Ayrton Senna Toleman testcar (AS026) is in fact number 22 in the Senna Racing Car collection! So much for my theory of that number in the series being ‘reserved’ for the Mansell/Senna ‘taxi’ (P914305).

The other forthcoming releases in the 1:43 Senna collection are his 1983 British F3 Ralt (AS028), 1983 Macau F3 Ralt (AS029), and 1986 Ford Sierra rally testcar (AS030).

Minichamps’ May release schedule was confirmed today, and there are a few gems on it.

Next week we will be receiving Andy Priaulx’s 1:43 2005 BMW 320i (P052401), the Brit’s WTCC-winning machine.

The week after we will finally receive the second batch of the 1:12 Norton Manx (P132400), which we have been waiting since before Christmas for, and the two car 1:43 Casino Royale set of the Aston Martin DB5 and DBS (P137600).

The week commencing 21st May is not so exciting, with nothing major set for release, but something more interesting could come into play by the time we get Minichamps’ weekly release schedule for that week.

Finally, the week commencing 28th May, we are scheduled to at last take our delivery of Minichamps’ 1:18 2006 Kimi Raikkonen McLaren MP4/21 replica (DC2603). At Nuremberg the sample looked stunning, with the reflective bodywork very effectively replicated. I can’t wait to add that one to my collection!