JAGSTON-HEALEY ANYONE?

The Challarostang looks a goodie, but it occurred to us that model makers needn't stop with the US pony car inventory. So for 2010, what about making a tasty fusion of sports cars from Britain?

Maybe a mix of Jaguar, Aston-Martin and Austin-Healey for starters, but there's a galaxy of candidates from the hall of history - TVR, MG, Morgan and Sunbeam are just a few names to get started with.

Or there's a steampunk route for sci-fi car fans too - something like the Brumm 1:43 Morgan three-wheeler is just made for conversion into some sort of Victorian-era machine. Perhaps reborn as a 'Heroes of the Air' flying car, suspended under an airship gasbag. It really was an amazing little device, seen in the pic above in the All British Car Show at Yolo County Fairgrounds, Woodland, California, in May 2008.

See the Brumm Morgan here.

Thanks to 'The Brain Toad' for the Morgan pic. His Flikr stream is here.

CHRISTMAS IS COMING - AND THE POST WON’T COST YOU A THING

Here’s one for UK visitors only: an ends-on-November-30 offer from Corgi. It’s for free post and packing on anything you order. It’s something of a tempter, especially if you’re already thinking about placing an order.

Corgi’s online shop is full of interesting diecast goodies - the 1:50 scale truck range continues to be a success story, as does the 1:36 scale James Bond series. These are attractively packaged in book-style boxes, with the Pierce Brosnan set a nicely crafted vehicle duo. This one packs the Aston-Martin Vanquish and Jaguar XKR which featured in the movie Die Another Day, one of the best of the newer Bond movies in SMN’s opinion. Not that you have to agree of course - we all have our faves!

The set packs a nice addition, a set of four movie posters: Die Another Day, GoldenEye, The World is Not Enough and Tomorrow Never Dies. All boxes are individually numbered.

The pictures show, top to bottom:
1 Corgi 1:50 scale trucks.
2 Pierce Brosnan 1:36 scale Bond set.

Have a look at the Corgi online shop here.

And there’s a host of James Bond items here.

ASTON-MARTIN TO RACE IN FORMULA 1

There’s winning news for Aston-Martin fans today - the company is planning to enter Formula One (F1) racing from 2012. It’s exciting too for SMN, as Aston-Martin is based at Gaydon, not too far from the SMN workbench, near Oxford, UK.

A-M is already into sportscar racing in a big way, and this will continue, with preparation by top racing outfit Prodrive. In fact, A-M cars will be running in F1 from 2010 under the Prodrive label, before changing to the fully-fledged Aston-Martin F1 name two years later.

For Aston-Martin model fans, there's plenty of choice out there, and one of the nicest diecasts around is the big 1:18 scale Autoart DBR9 in Le Mans racing finish (top picture). It’s a jewel-like production, packed with detail, and just made for display. In 1:43 scale, an attractive James Bond DB5 from the movie Goldfinger (lower pictures) was offered with an Italian partwork that has since included a whole range of well-known and not-so-well-known vehicles from the Bond movies - from a Lotus submarine-car to a Citroen 2CV.

These come up from time to time on eBay, so it’s worth keeping an eye open. Dozens of Bond vehicles have already been released so it’s probably a bit late to subscribe to the whole series.

Details of the Aston-Martin’s F1 ambitions are at Autocar magazine’s website here.

Autoart’s Aston-Martin racers can be viewed here.