Adrian-345694

Well The 'Bugs' have arrived! Now I can crack on with the Reliant Regal conversion which uses the Scalextric bodyshell, the pics show how far I managed to get with scratchbuilding the chassis and floorpan sections, now I can use the steering gear suspension parts and engine assembly from the Kit. Thanks to Ratch regarding his comment about the damage to the tooling there seems to be very little evidence other than what must be a new tool for the clear parts (as you said), it seems that a change has been made to the side panels that I'm sure were moulded in 2 halves on the original but now come in a single piece (which in my view is a bonus). An addition to the canopy section denoting the copyrite which didn't appear on the original issue - bit of a shame this as it's location has caused 2 small sinkage marks to the roof. Altogether, what a lovely thing with well defined parts from a tooling that's getting on for 50 years old, albeit without a great deal of use. Thanks to all at Airfix involved in this and of course all of the re-releases we have enjoyed over the past couple of years.

That's good news, I have 2 on back order so hoping to see them materialise fairly soon now, I want to use the chassis as a basis for the Scalextric Reliant along with the engine parts. I see Scalextric have re-tooled the Rover SD1 and it looks nice, their first example along with the TR7 were very poor and involved so much cutting about to get them anywhere near proportionally correct. It would be great if Humbrol released these new models as static kits as they did once before, the Caterham 7 kit was basic but very nicely detailed, I purchased most of them as they were cheap at the time mainly to use for parts. It would be nice to see it happen again with these recent additions to the Scalex family as they're nice good old British cars, certainy the SD1 and the Jag XJS etc.

Yes Ratch, that is the indeed the case, when I first started on my quest to obtain examples of the modern car series back in the early '90s, I was privileged to have a phone conversation with the great Trevor Snowdon who provided me the info regarding the tooling for the modern car series and he confirmed what you've just said, however the Bond Bug tooling was with the other 2, if this tooling has been restored enough to run the Bug kit again - well just maybe, could we see a release of the other 2?

Great to see the the Bond Bug re-released - I was convinced that the 'Bug' along with the Marina & Maxi would never become available to us due to the damaged tooling, so with the release of the 'Bug' could we see the other 2 again? I would like to hear your thoughts on this idea though, over the last 30 years or so I've been fortunate enough to build up a collection of pretty much all of the 32 scale 'Modern Car' series, it's been a long old haul as I refuse to pay 'stupid - box collector' type prices so most of my examples were previously constructed, some well and some of poor quality, no problem though as a quick dip in the caustic soda solution sorts out that little problem. Sorry, wandered off thread - during this period I explored the idea of converting scalextric cars into kerbside static models, some were hopless as the proportions and even the scaling is isomewhat inacurate to say the least, however I purchased recently the Reliant Regal Van, now this is bang on, I've always wanted an Aston DBS/V8 so I bought the recent release of the James Bond example, it is superb! Now don't get me wrong, they're not cheap around 50 quid or so but it got me to thinking - Hornby who owns Scalextric and (funny old thing) Airfix also, could they do an 'in house' venture to release these as static kits, after all the bodyshell tooling is all done as are the clear parts, wheels & lights etc. The Jaguar XJS is another lovely example, tell me what you all think!

Hello all, this is a little off track but still hope you can help, as part of my modelmaking hobby I'm always on the lookout for materials and equipment that help with the cause. Some time ago I picked up a quantity of NOS Humbrol paint products in the old square bottles, remember them? Amongst this lot were a number of bottles of Base Cote - I've never used as I dont really know what it was for, can anyone out there in 'model land' help me?