Toy vehicles

 Another thing that I enjoy collecting is toy vehicles. In fact, I suppose collecting things is in my nature. Here are some photographs of some of my toy vehicles taken in various locations in Loughborough and elsewhere.

Enjoy!

Kerb appeal. This is a blue Matchbox 1949 Kurtis Sport Car. A relatively new casting by Matchbox, it debuted last year in the mainline range in dark red, but I wasn't in the mood to get it at that time. However, last month I finally decided to get this, which comes from this year's mainline range in navy blue. Here it is, photographed on a kerb on Knightthorpe Road on the way home.

In real life, the Kurtis Sport Car was a two-seater aluminium-body sports car designed by Frank Kurtis and built by his company, Kurtis Kraft, from 1949-50. The cost of production ultimately killed the KSC; only between 18 and 36 KSCs were estimated to have been produced. In contrast, thousands of toy KSCs have probably been made.

A Matchbox 1980 AMC Pacer, another fruit of that recent trip to B&M, photographed on Byron Street. You certainly need a car like this when the surface of your street has as many craters as the moon.

Ahh, yes, my slander of Byron Street continues. ;-)

Yes, the Hot Wheels Tesla Cybertruck. The Cybertruck had a colourful history from the very beginning: if you know much about it, you'll know about how Elon Musk's right-hand man at Tesla, Franz von Holzhausen, smashed two of the side windows during the truck's unveiling, and you may also know about the viral video in which it dragged a Ford F-150 uphill. No doubt, though, its most distinctive feature is its angular shape, which you certainly either love or hate. I love it. It kinda reminds me of the Mobile Command Units ('war-wagons') in the 1983 movie The Prodigal Planet (which you probably haven't heard of. I reckon they might have used Cybertrucks in it if they'd existed.)

The casting also has had a life of its own. It was initially expected to debut in Series 2 of Hot Wheel's id range (a series of cars featuring embedded microchips for use with apps and interactive track sets) with an open load bed with a Cyberquad embedded inside, but it was delayed and the debut model instead ended up being this version with a closed load bed, which I think I prefer the idea of. The only thing I somewhat disagree with is that the wheels are a bit too big, but it is not as bad as some other of Hot Wheels' attempts at other real vehiches, which are terrible. I found it in Home Bargains in Devonshire Square on my birthday in 2021; it is shown here in a heavily edited picture taken in the sandpit in Queen's Park Playground, with the fence behind having been replaced by a picture of the sky to make the Cybertruck appear to have been plonked in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

Here are two more American electric pickups, photographed at the LLAGS garden on the University: a Matchbox Ford F-150 Lightning (left) and a Rivian R1T. Both are debut models from the mainline range, the former in 2022 and the latter being a delayed carry-over which finally arrived in 2023. The Ford came from Tesco Extra while the Rivian came from Morrisons. I was pleased to find newer Matchbox models in Morrisons, even if they cost 30 pence more than Tesco. The next time I visited Tesco, they'd had the cheek to hike the price up to £2! I remember when they cost £1.25 there! It meant that now something in Tesco cost more than something in Morrisons, which is odd, as it's usually Morrisons that's pricier. The reason why I've been finding Matchbox on sale elsewhere is apparently due to an exclusivity deal with Tesco ending after they reintroduced Matchbox cars cars to the UK in the autumn of 2019. Re-introduced - yes, they, despite originally being British, became unobtainable in the UK between around 2017/8 to autumn 2019.

An old favourite of mine, this is the Hot Wheels Mach Speeder. I bought it in 2019 from the OneStop in Thorpe Acre. New that year from the mainline range, it was the second colour variant that year, having debuted in white and orange with blue stripes and golden wheels. This one was red and black with white stripes and wheels, but the stripes have since gone and the wheels have been recoloured silver. But I love it. It's one of my all-time favourite toy vehicles. While a lot of Hot Wheels cars are frankly rather hideous, there are a few that are very good, and this is one of them. This photo was taken at The Rushes Shopping Centre.

Another favourite of mine is this Land Rover Defender 90. Originally debuting in green in the 2021 mainline series, this one comes from the 2022 Stars of Britain series, which experienced a premature demise after only six of the twelve models expected to be released in the series that year turned up. Given that they were for all intents and purposes ordinary models, just with a British theme (which, as with some other similar themes such as Stars of France, etc., contained some non-British vehicles), the only real benefit of the extra price in Tesco (£2 as opposed to £1.25 for the mainline cars then) was a picture of the car that wasn't covered by the plastic box on the front. The Defender 90 is shown here on a bench in Jubilee Park.

One of my favourite cities is Coventry. I visited there in 2019 and my initial impression was that of a confusing post-war labyrinth. However, by the next time I visited there in 2022, the city centre has had some major improvements, which include the installation of splash pads in the Upper Precinct and in Greyfriars, the latter of which is the setting in which I photographed this Matchbox 1976 Volkswagen Golf GTI from the 2022 mainline series. The Golf is a new-ish casting, having debuted in the 2020 mainline range; this silver Golf is the fifth version to date.

Continuing on the theme of water features, we go to Nottingham to see this Hot Wheels Audi RS e-tron GT on a water feature in a garden on the corner of Shakespeare Street and Dryden Street. The Audi RS e-tron GT is in real life based off the Porsche Taycan; both are sporty electric fastback saloons.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Thanks for reading!