NICE FIND AT A DRAG RACING MEET

The best collector advice is always to keep your eyes open, no matter where you happen to be. And the tasty yellow custom Ford pictured above was a byproduct of a photo-video trip to the UK’s Santa Pod raceway, a honey pot for anyone who’s into the custom scene, with noise, speed, smoke and spectacle as bonus extras.

The Grim Reaper monster truck (top picture) was among the stars there, as was Terry Grant’s modded 1937 Ford Sedan (next picture). This gunmetal-grey beast could pull smoke-n-spin donuts to order, seemingly on the head of a pin.

Santa Pod’s stores are way better than those found at most race tracks, and lurking behind ‘real money’ dragster models, SMN came across this very nice 1:36 scale 1950s-era Ford Custom Street Rod made by the Chinese Tin Toys company, priced about the same as a couple of cups of coffee.

The 135 mm (5.3 in) long model has opening doors and hood, plus a decent stab at an engine and interior (bottom); the underside is nicely detailed and SMN was pleased to see that the model is an ‘Official Licensed Product’. The side-pipes could do with some careful work with a model drill, to open them up for a more realistic look, otherwise the neatly flamed Ford is a decent model. And for those who like added play-value, it’s even got a pullback-and-go motor tucked between the rear wheels!

Drag Racing: Noisy heaven for superdetail fans

Details, details! Making sure your model is packed with detail – accurate detail – is a sure-fire way to get your model really noticed, and maybe winning a few competition prizes.

For truck and dragster fans, few things beat a day out at a dragmeet. The great thing about drag racing, compared to (say) Formula 1, is that you can usually walk right up to the vehicles, and also to the guys and gals fettling them.

For modellers, this means that you can snap away with your digicam to get accurate reference shots pretty much as close as you like. And this means that you have the information needed for those show winners. Plus of course, it’s a great day out! The shots here were taken at the UK’s Santa Pod raceway, which is an ace venue. You can visit Santa Pod’s website here.

A word of warning though – drag racing is LOUD, and it’s not difficult to damage your ears. You’ll get reminders of this over the PA system, so please don’t ignore the warnings to use ear defenders. These are always on sale, but in fact, I’ve found that for me, the neatest ear defenders are a pair of iPod headphones. That’s the in-ear sort, that go right into your ear canals and cut out most ambient noise. Mine are the German Sennheiser brand, which also give brain-meltingly good audio quality when you use 'em for music.