Racing cars

I am nearly complete with Corgi's early racing cars now, having found an exceptionally nice green Vanwall, 150, and a pretty good red one. I knew nothing about these before but am learning fast.

These were not that easy to find, at least not in good condition, but I was very fortunate with the green Vanwall which also came with a spotless BRM 152.

It seems that the first issues were in British Racing Green for both 150 and 152. Perhaps the similarity between the two was a bit confusing but, whatever the reason, they changed to red a little while later for the Vanwall. The BRM, however, is always in green.

The red Vanwall seems quite scarce. This one was the best I could find anywhere at the time and has reasonable paintwork, a complete screen but the Racing Number transfer is mostly worn away. It looks very much like the RN1 used on later models so I may get away with a replacement.

Almost all the red Vanwalls I found were actually being sold as 150S models, which made searching more difficult until I caught on to the fact and just looked for Vanwall. The S model has a silver band on the bodywork around the front end and there should also be a driver sticking out of the cockpit. It also has suspension but, of course, you can't tell that from most photos. There were plenty of 150S models floating around but very few of its predecessor.

This leaves just a couple of items remaining in this section: a first type Lotus Mk II (151) and the first type of Bluebird (152). I have a silver 151 but need the red and blue variations. I doubt that I'll be able to get a red one as they're very rare and, so far, what I thought would be cheap and cheerful in blue has not proved to be the former at all. It's a very dull looking model that really doesn't excite me a great deal but even the blue ones have been way too expensive.

As for the Bluebirds, well, they're another story. I'll write about them once I find a reasonable earlier model which, hopefully, shouldn't be so difficult.

Looking back at the Vanwall and BRM for a moment, there are two seat colours for each model. The green BRM can have either a cream or silver seat. So far, I have a red Vanwall with a silver seat and a green one with a cream seat. I suspect there will be models with these reversed so I guess I'm not done yet! I don't list the blue-tinted glass separately. If I did that I would have to find further examples of just about every one of the early years' issues! So I shall regard that as one of those random variations that isn't hugely important and hope I can get away with that for now.