Scalextric Lotus 49 and Eagle Weslake

I hope I will be able to get these cars soon. They will make great additions to my Classic F1s!


Tom

David - when I get to be able to build a car as well as you do - I would let wrong markings influence me!!

I will buy this set and smile, however.........

QUOTE (Ragnar @ 19 Mar 2008, 04:58) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I hope I will be able to get these cars soon. They will make great additions to my Classic F1s!


Tom

buy two sets! then at least you can race them

Firstly, sincere apologies to all the retailers who sponsor Slotforum. I did not mean to infer that Electric Dreams, although also a Slotforum sponsor, actually had these in stock. I originally posted this on Slotblog, where Electric Dreams is the exclusive sponsoring retailer, and forgot to edit the post before posting here. No offense meant.

Secondly, yes, I do have the very first set produced and as of right now I'm the only person in the world to have a set. I don't know if it is a 'prototype' but suspect that it is identical to the sets currently being shipped to retailers.

Thirdly, to the 'rivet counters'. In fairness to Scalextric, unlike Fly and a few other manufacturers, they have never claimed that any of the cars which they have produced are models of a specific version that competed in any specific race. They do however claim that they manufacture toy electric racing cars, which are representations of specific makes of actual cars.

While the 1967 Legends set is a celebration of Clark's Lotus 49 and Gurney's Eagle, the text on the box merely states that on the 18th of June 1967, Dan Gurney took an historic win in the Belgian Grand Prix, the Eagle Weslake's first and only victory. Regarding the Lotus 49, they state that the car first appeared at the 1967 Dutch Grand Prix, where Clark went on to score its debut Grand Prix. They also mention Clark's 1967 Italian Grand Prix drive, regarded as one of the greatest ever in F1 even to this day, and his win in Mexico, where he equalled Juan Manuel Fangio in terms of victories.

Yes, there are issues with the Lotus - certainly with the one I have. Unlike the Eagle, the tyre sidewalls are not tampo-printed; perhaps it's a licensing issue with Firestone? Yes, the cockpit cowl / windscreen are from the version that raced in the Dutch Grand Prix yet the livery, according to David, is from the Mexican Grand Prix (I'm not sure about that, though. All the pictures which I have seen show the car having black numbers on white roundel). And yes, Clark's helmet is matt black instead of being dark blue.

Here are a couple of more pictures:













The motor clips into the chassis, while the front and rear axles clip into the body. The body and chassis is attached by way of 5 small screws.



I like the screw fixing of the guide, which rotates freely. I've not seen this on Scalextric cars before and wish that all manufacturers would do this, to reduce the amount of guide 'wobble' which almost all r-t-r cars suffer from. Maurizio, please take note!



This picture shows the relative size of the Lotus 49 compared to a Scalextric McLaren MP4/21 (yes, it's a prototype model of the McLaren - I am a very lucky guy!)







With kind regards,

Russell

Just to slip my anorak on again to count a couple more rivets....

The 49 raced at Spa and Zandvoort with the full height cockpit surround and small windscreen, at Zandvoort it was number five but had no other markings, at Spa it was number 21 and again had no other markings.

Clark won four GPs that season and coincidently his race number was always number 5 when he was victorious.

In Mexico the markings are more or less as per the Scalex car. In fact there was a white race number on the near side of the car (with the water pipe) and on the off side they had a white roundel with a black number on it.

The only error on the Eagle are the trade decals that were'nt on the car when Dan gurney won at Spa.

Sadly, I can trot this stuff out even without looking up my any of references. My excuse being that in 1967 I watched every scrap of the limited TV coverage available, bought every magazine with GP coverage in it that I could lay my hands on and have continued with my love of all things Lotus and the great Jim Clark for the last 40 years.

David