letters

Seconded...... I would like to second Steven Denner’s letter in FSW 05-2001 which asked for a kit of the Gulf Mirage M6 lm 1973. PM probably would be the logical choice. DAM made a nice kit of the GR7 of 1974, but are they active anymore? Gil Mann, Louisville, USA Good idea Gil. Dam still manufacture their range of kits but have not made any additions for a very long time. That DRM Toyota Yesterday I received your always very welcome magazine. I would like to give you some information about the Grp 5 DRM Toyota Celicia of Rolf Stommelen and Harald Ertl (Competition 43, page 9 FSW 5-01). During the season 1977 the Schnitzer prepared car raced three times in the division 1 but crossed the finishing line due to technical problems only once on the fourth place. Champion in 1977 was Rolf Stommelen driving a Porsche 935 also in division 1. In 1978 the Toyota was driven by Rolf Stommelen 5 times. He also saw the finishing line only once (8th place) due to different technical problems. Harald Ertl became the 1978 Champion driving a BMW 320 turbo in division 2. Klaus-Jürgen Schaaff, Düsseldorf A special year A request for a model. This year is very special for 1950’s British sports cars - Jaguar won Le Mans and there are many models, however Frazer Nash won the Targa Florio (the only British car to do so) and has never been modelled ! Then Sir Stirling won the British Empire Trophy in Frazer Nash, also in 1951. A similar car won the first Sebring race in 1952 and would be popular with American modellers. The Frazer Nash Le Mans Replica was successful in many other British events - so how about it ? Surely PM would love to do this car, especially as it ran at Le Mans in 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952 & 1953!!! James Trigwell, UK More info........... Here is some information now about models in 4SW 05/01. The Martini 917 (p13) which ran at Watkins Glen in 1970 was driven by van Lennep/Larrousse during the Six Hours. She finished 9th. During the Can-Am race van Lennep was 6th. The car had Can-Am, SCCA & Johnson stickers. You can find photos in the “Speed Merchants” book & CD-rom. The shape of the numbers is wrong. Compare them to the “good” ones on the Pallino model (p11), which is the ‘Glen car. At Hockenheim, this car wore #12 & was classified 2nd with van Lennep. Philipe Moriniere, France That Zagato....... Reference ABC’s OSCA 2500 GT Zagato - you have the 1998 date correct on page 4 but incorrect on page 20. Just received FSW this morning and see you are wondering what this car is. If you want one they will be made at the rate of 100 per year for 3 years at GMP Automobili-Caronno Pertusella (Varese-Italy). But - I do not know anything more than you do, but there was an excellent article on this car in the Auto-Hebdo issue of 20 January 1999 (issue 1171). It is a great magazine for car modellers. For your info, the pic in FSW looks like the real thing but is lacking any badges. On the full-size car there is a circular badge on the bonnet saying OSCA-Fratelli Maserati and on the ‘boot’ there is a (wait for it !) Touring Superleggera badge (two separate badges one above the other) and underneath is written DROMOS! The (presumably) small opening side window has a black rubber sealing strip instead of a chrome or metal one and even the front air intake on the real car looks odd to say the least. The pics of the full-size car could be from a pre-production car. Jean-Pierre Sandrap, email Fantastic ! Your new web site is FANTASTIC! I’m almost exclusively an Alfa kit collector, and your new searchable database makes this so easy and efficient. Also, having the US Dollar and Euro equivalent is a great touch. You should be very proud of this site - it’s one of the best of any kind for searching! Thanks again for making my passion that much more accessible! Steve Davis, California, USA More Loti wanted Congratulations on the new web site - excellent. I have just finished trawling through your Lotus listing. Regrettably by now I have most everything Lotus available but if I were just starting a Lotus collection, the well laid out pages and the many photos illustrating the models available would be really helpful. Keep up the good work! My only frustration is not directed against GPM......but having just read the latest FSW (and those before) why do manufacturers seem to be totally ignoring new Lotus releases in 1/43 scale (and I don’t mean yet another Lotus 11 or a 49 or a 79 etc). Apart from the imaginative Roger Dutemple and his excellent Axel’R Lotuses, plus SMTS from time to time when they can get round to it, who else is there showing any interest in servicing the Lotus market? (Is it heretical to suggest that the model world might conceivably by now be nearing saturation with Ferrari and Porsche variants??) At least Italian model manufacturers such as BBR seem proud to actively promote their “national” car. Are there no British manufacturers currently willing to champion a few more Lotus releases? (what’s happened to SRC?). Even a few reissues by M. Viranet of the F2 and F3 Lotus 41s he released some years ago would be a welcome relief......but I understand that’s unlikely. Is there a licensing problem or do manufacturers simply feel there isn’t a viable market? Surely there would be adequate interest worldwide in for example models of the early Lotuses (eg Mk1 to Mk 6)? Perhaps a few words in the next FSW News Column or the Letters Section might help to stimulate some manufacturer consideration on this issue? Peter Stevenson, N Ireland We agree completely and think that the situation is the result of an old model world problem - lack of imagination. There is no licensing problem regarding old Loti because Clive Chapman - who holds the copyrights - is very sympathetic to ‘our’ world and appreciates that quantities are small. Bentley Le Mans When (if?) this year’s Le Mans Bentley is modelled, fellow kit builders might like to note that the lower body sides were not green as is the rest of the body but black. Close study of race and pre-race photos shows the areas in question. We should all also note that the Gulf Audi #4 raced with a high downforce nose featuring canard fins and not the nose the car practiced with which not only had no canards but also different wheelarch top louvres and slight decal differences. Both noses are shown in the utomodélisme Le Mans book but the new PM model of the car has the practice nose. That as it turns out is not so bad as the car only lasted a couple of laps! And PM’s confusion is nderstandable as before the race the car appeared in the pit lane with the low downforce nose. Vic Falls, Wapping, London Steve’s Maserati...... We are professional models builders here in Belgium and your book has always been a useful help and a source of inspiration. But this time we took our pen (or should we say keyboard) to comment on your article on the Stephen Barnett Maserati. We had the opportunity to see (in real) a D50 from him via our friend Patrick Badot and of course this shows us the way to go for our own models, and seeing the pictures in the FSW 6/2001 we have to admit that to achieve such a master piece is wonderful but... Looking at the picture on page 6 there is something that shocks us on this Maserati and on your comments of the car. We are pointing out here that we have not seen the real model and our comment are only based on the photo of the model and the one of the real car. From our point of view the stripes on the front lights are way too big on the model compare to the ones on the actual car. This is the first thing that comes to view and spoil the all subject. From where came the mistake we do not know but coming from Stephen Barnett is very strange. v-b models, Belgium When writing about this model we did not notice what you say is an error, had we done so we would have mentioned it. ....and more.... To answer your question about the PM Datsun 2000 from the 1969 Monte. The car was driven by Raimo Kossila and Pertti Mannonen and started from Monte Carlo. There were four Datsuns entered for the rally (not sure if they were all the same model) and I don’t have details of the finishers, i.e. they were not in the top 10. Strange that PM should pick this car, as Hannu Mikkola entered and finished 9th in a similar car on the 1968 Monte! Far be it from me to criticise a model of Stephen Barnett’s, but... the picture of the real Maserati next to the model on page 6 of FSW 06-2001, shows that the model has the roundel and number set too far back and not sitting on the top edge of the grille aperture and that the white taping over the headlights is much too heavy. Eh what the heck, I could not build it to Steve’s standard anyway.... Chris Derbyshire, Southampton Good idea While looking through some old multi-subject modelling magazines it suddenly occurred to me that our hobby could do with something similar to the aircraft builders guides. Look at any publication dedicated to Spitfires or some such, and those line drawn colour and markings guides scream out at you with information. We all know that a good photograph will paint a thousand words, but not everyone has access to them. We also know that cars vary from race to race, and although changes are known of, no good quality shots can be found, so the possibilities are exiting. I would love to have some of the books which you carry for this purpose, but I cannot afford them. A £40 book for one reference is beyond my budget. I realise that royalties have to be paid to use the photographs, and you can now see a trend towards ‘photo packs’ to prove that the interest is there (I assume). So how about a small booklet with side, front, top and rear drawings in colour where this is known to be correct, even if no colour photo exists. This would not have to be entirely accurate so long as the F.S. number was listed with a matching car spray colour. Subjects could be those cars at a particular race, the different markings of a particular type during a championship season, those cars driven by your favourite driver.....the potential is huge and multilingual. Use your imagination. These publications are turned out in large numbers for other sections of the hobby, and coupled with modern computer paint and colour software packages would surely not be expensive. If somebody does take up the idea - yourselves perhaps - please remember that interest beyond sports cars and F1 does exist, and those of us interested in tin top racing and rallying are badly starved of good reference material, particularly touring car racing. If, like me, you want anything in colour before 1990, much searching and gnashing of teeth is in prospect. Remember the words of some very clever fellow: copying one person’s work is plagiarism, copying from all over the place is research. (Shhh, high resolution flat bed scanners are quite cheap ). By the way, if your on-line database files are taking so long to download, why not use a good compression package to shrink them? John Cully, Dublin, Ireland Our on-line database files shoud now be running faster.