Sellotape, twisted wires and Chitty Chitty nearly bang bang

 I suppose  it is only fair to warn you that I am not a fan of the Corgi Chitty Chitty Bang Bang model so any review of the Model Club's latest offering probably wouldn't have been glowing. Indeed, I hadn't planned to do one at all as I knew it would be difficult to avoid bad language or just sounding a little bored with it all, at best. However, here I am and, although, this advice may be a little late as many people will have had theirs already, let me start by saying that unless you really do wish to pretend to fly it around the room or display it sans boîte on a shelf, leave it in its box. Don't attempt to remove it.

Firstly you have to open the flap which I am sure every collector now knows is likely to tear something unless you follow the instructions that several people have now posted in various forums and have various tools handy to release it. I was very lucky; the club had sent me one which was already open at one end. Once you have done so you will find that tugging at neither the card nor plastic protective cover achieves much. I proceeded to try to open the flap at the other end with a view to pushing rather than pulling the contents but, not having the appropriate tools or instructions to hand, I decided not to and returned to make a second attempt.

Although this image doesn't really show the problem very well, the Chinese people doing the packing were clearly in a hurry to head home when doing this one as the sellotape was very haphazardly applied and some elements had attached themselves to the inside of the box, so preventing any movement. I have no idea how this was presented in the original but one would hope it was rather better and I don't recall much use of tape by Corgi in the 60s.

So, with a little jiggling around I did finally get the unit containing the model out on a white plastic cloud. Now comes the really difficult part. The model is attached by two pieces of plastic-coated wire, one piece around each axle and threaded through some holes in the cloud. On this example they were incredibly tightly twisted to the extent that it was not easy to figure out which way to unwind them. After I while I did get them loose but then you have to be oh so careful in unthreading the wire back through fairly delicate cloud plastic and then over the wheels and avoiding the many bits and pieces which stick out on this model and look only too vulnerable to being accidentally knocked.

So finally, it's out and I can run it around the desk and try whatever operating features it has. I look at the box to discover how to operate these and discover that there is actually only one and there are no instructions on the panel headed OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS. I guess that's how it must have been in 1968, though, so I cannot really moan about that. 

It arrives in the box with the side wings out and the front and rear 'stabilisers' fitted. It took me a while but I eventually discovered that you need to pull the lever by the driver to have the wings fly out once they been pushed back. (Later I read how to do this on the back of the Certificate!)

It released them quite satisfactorily the first time I tried but it was decidedly vague on the following attempts and I needed to tug a little more firmly on the lever than I really felt comfortable doing as this model would be heading across the Pond to a customer in the States in a while. But it did work. Several customers have reported this to be a problem. I was surprised to find the lever made of plastic. I am pretty sure the original would have been metal.

The same thought comes to mind for most of the other elements which appear all over this model. The front lamps, for example, whilst appearing to have slightly better 'jewel' material for the lamps than past Club models are mounted in plastic holders and arms, the same material also being used for the radiator surround. This brown plastic will, I am sure, have been gold coloured metal on the original so this will be a disappointment for many. It also suffers from being rather more bendy than metal. OK, so it may not fracture if you happen to brush against it a couple of times but it does result in the headlamps not necessarily pointing in the same direction. I suspect that very careful heating of the arm and resetting them would be possible but I'll leave that to someone else to try. As it is they look reasonable and I doubt another model will be any better so it's not something worth returning it for.

There's a strap on the bonnet, as the Certificate also reminds us, which I gather was left off in the 90s re-issue and we're also told that the wheels are now as per the original. And so they should be.

I do wonder about the dashboard - surely that would not have been silver plastic? You do feel that these elements would have been worth doing properly in some metal. The windscreen too is in brown plastic. again, I am sure many of the originals will have snapped and this will put up with a little more bruising than metal but it still strikes me as rather unsatisfactory.

I did not attempt to remove the front or rear 'stabilisers'. There are simply too many little things here and there which could be damaged so I decided not to take any risks.

I expect the characters and the main body of the model are not too different. Here are some closer images for your perusal.

Underneath there is no 'Made in China' text which is surprising. However no-one is likely to be fooled into believing this is anything other than a re-issue. What they may wonder, though, is which re-issue this might be if they're not well-versed in straps or wheels. That is because it has a base attached by screws not rivets, rather like the Yellow Submarine which we saw a short while ago.

Perhaps this is to enable more rapid repairs back at the Club should they find a lot getting returned. It is, nevertheless, not likely to go down too well with many collectors. For my part, I would quite like the re-issues to have screws in place of rivets as I could then have fun changing parts and repairing windows or whatever.

All in all, though, the box is well reproduced and the model looks good from a distance, in the box, where I recommend it stays.