O Scale Motor Vehicle Chronicle Dec. 6

Richard - that's an interesting pair for sure!  

My dad had wanted to buy a 1950 Studebaker back then but for some reason they weren't available. He ended up taking a Greyhound from New Orleans to Detroit and driving a 1950 Plymouth 'Turtle back' sedan back down. I think he paid $1500 for the Plymouth!

Nice Dinky Studebakers, in excellent shape considering. Dinky toys are wonderful, but the problem is you are tempted to "improve" them slightly (install window glass where missing, paint tires black where they aren't or have faded, repaint, etc) but you know there as so few survivors that you really should just leave them alone.  

On last week's thread I posted models of five of my six favorite cars: I've owned about 63s or so cars since 1966 (if you count parts cars and I bought, too).  There are models of some other cars I owned available (e.g., probably I could find a '96 Mercedes 280C - but it was the worst car I ever owned, so why?).  The slide below my models I have of other cars I owned.  

Left: the only six-cylinder Spitfire I have saw: Triumph GT mated with sheet metal and all from a front clip Spitfire bought for a song: it was an easy transformation given you had a welding torch and resulted in a better car than it had any right to be given the effort involved: I really wonder why Triumph didn't do this.  Wish I still had it.  Seventh on my favorite car list.

Next: Alfas: a Guilletta Sprint GT & a Guilia Sprint Special.  The Guillietta was actually rather pedestrain but the Guilia had an attitude and was much faster than any 1600 cc car had a right to be, but both were virtually unmaintainable. 

Next to right: the only professional driving job I ever had was as a one-season stint as a diagnostic driver for Autodelta, sorting out Montreals before they were assigned to team drivers.  I didn't actually own the car but spent all day with them for months on end.  Actually rather ugly, I always thought (although I kept that to myself at the time, and fast, but never quite enough to be really competitive: they usually won only when everything else DNF'd.

Next: this is a model of the nearly iconic (and unaffordable) 1966 330 GTC whereas I have the nearly indistinguishable but fa, far less desirable follow-on 1969 365 GTC (which no one will ever model since it was not a hit) in a rather faded dark blue.    

Oh, and I also have a couple of models of Austin Healey Sprites - I owned two along with a parts car - but they are in a hard to get part of the layout so I will leave them there. 

Dinky Toys and Christmas!  By far my favorite toys as a young boy. I fondly remember  every Christmas my sister, who lived in Canada ,would send me a couple of nicely wrapped Dinky Treasures. As they lay under the Christmas Tree, in anticipation,  by Christmas morning the wrappings barely concealed those wonderful yellow boxes!

Richard, I noticed in one of your threads that you welcome suggestions for future topics.  Would you be interested in stock cars; i.e. the racing kind?  Although the attached photo is of a 1/24 one I built (and you may have seen race in upstate NY if you ever enjoyed that type of competition) I have several in 1/43 that I could feature.  I realize that this is really a niche within a niche, but I would think perhaps there might be some others who could contribute as well.  What think you?