It was birthday time in the office of our friends at the Yellow Wheels website. So it was SMN personalized gift time, in the form of a Saico 1:36 scale diecast Jaguar E-Type, with Yellow Wheels logos tastily applied.
Aaah, it was much appreciated! As Tim Andrew of YW put it: “...I was blown away that David (Jefferis) had taken the trouble to hand-decorate the model with miniature Yellowwheels decals. Especially as unknown to him I had shot a whole book about restoring Jaguar E-Types back to their original state with writer Philip Porter. I immediately searched for the book to check with my hunch that this was a Mk1. The Saico model and box doesn’t offer info about its model number but I think it’s a Mk1 3.8 because of the early bumpers and especially the spun-aluminum dashboard, but I’ll gladly be corrected. The Jag now has pride of place on the YW office shelves!”
The real thing is definitely one of motoring’s all-time greats, and regularly comes at or near the the top of ‘most beautiful auto design ever’ polls. Here at SMN, we just say: “IWOOT”.
As for the Saico, it’s more of a toy than a scale model (well, it comes with a pull-back motor anyway). However, like many similar products it’s almost there in the scale stakes. If Saico finessed some details, the E-Type would be transformed.
As for the logo decorations, procedure was speedy:
1 Copy and paste YW logos to the desktop.
2 Open them up in a suitable program (SMN used Adobe Photoshop).
3 Crop and size to fit.
4 Print direct from Photoshop, or import images into a page layout program (SMN used Quark Express).
5 Print onto suitable paper. Self-adhesive and decal sheets are available, but we printed onto standard A4 paper.
6 Trim out images with scalpel or craft knife, turn upside-down, spray lightly with lo-tack glue (SMN used Spraymount).
7 Apply carefully to the Jag, using scalpel or knife for precise positioning.
8 Voila! Presentation complete - add a couple of logos to the box and all’s done.
Visit the Yellow Wheels site where you can see more Jaguar and other auto stuff, here.