Miniatures News, September 1982

FROM Grand Prix Models of Radlett comes the information that their model of Hannu Mikkola’s RAC Rally-winning Audi Quattro, as made from their £8.95. 1:43rd-scale metal kit, has been described as highly accurate” by those who been the car intimately, Audi having helped with proportions and details of the model. It has, we are told, a highly detailed interior with a full decalled instrument panel and ten-point fixing for the roll-cage. Nine water-slide colour transfers are available for providing the external trim and rubber tyres are used. The decals supplied enable this to be made up as either the Mikkola or the Mouton car, and later a BF Goodrich-sponsored John Buller version is visualised. The same supplier has imported a Rio Bugatti Royale model with coupé body and rear trunk.

A quarterly model-car magazine, Model Auto Review, has been published in Leeds, price 90p a copy, the first issue contains features on Austin 7 models and miniature Citroëns, in which I learn from the Citroën piece that at least three Spanish firms supply copies of the original Jouet Citroën tin-plate toys, albeit with some plastic parts, and that Fulgurex of Switzerland have a proper 1:7th-scale tin-plate B14 Citroën model, said to be an exact reproduction of the later Jouet ones, with the electric motor. [I remember going with my mother to the Citroën showrooms in Piccadilly to buy one of the first toy Citroëns, being served by a disdainful car-salesman, and Preferring the I0/6d 7.5 h.p. two-seater to the 15/- 11.4 h.p. four-seater — Ed.]

Grand Prix Models of Radlett have a 7 mm. to one-foot scale model, in metal kit form, of the exciting new Ford Escort RS1700 Turbocharged competition car, this four-inch-long miniature having been made with much help from Ford, while their real car was still on the secrets’-list. Apparently two handbuilt and painted versions of this GP model were used by top Ford executives for demonstration to sponsors and to date Grand Prix Models report that sales of the £8.95 1/43rd-scale kit have outsold the full-size Ford RS1700. When the real car is ready for rallying a new competition edition of the model is planned.

W . B .