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Diecast Delights: Wartburg 353 Pickup
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Eastern Bloc states weren’t big fans of small commercial vehicles, despite whatever impression Hollywood films may give you. The reason was quite simple, small businesses that would need things like pickups simply didn’t exist, and nobody really owned any huge private property out in the countryside to the point where they’d need a pickup. So…
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Diecast Delights: VAZ 2121 Niva
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I don’t think anyone will dispute that the VAZ 2121 Niva is everyone’s favorite Russian 4×4 hatchback (ignoring for a moment the fact that it is the only Russian 4×4 hatchback). But unlike VAZ’s previous efforts, it wasn’t based on anything that FIAT designed or manufactured, withthe Niva using a minimal number of FIAT parts-bin…
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Diecast Delights: GAZ 3110 in 1:43
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Remember the GAZ 3110? Of course you do, it’s the taxi that was hooned by Jason Bourne in the second installment of the Bourne trilogy. And thanks to that film, millions of people got to see what they thought was a Volvo 240 with a weird front fascia. Truth be told, the GAZ dates back…
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Amazing LEGO Technik Caterham Seven
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My parents tell me that in my childhood I have made some amazing LEGO creations. I don’t know about that, because apparently my creations were not amazing enough to take pictures of. All of my creations were limited to what we today refer to as the City Collection. Things changed dramatically when I received my…
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Diecast Delights: ZiL 164 in 1:43 is Stylistically Socialist in Any Scale
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The next piece of diecast awesomeness we’re going to ogle this week is this ZiL 164 by AIST, which came out just a few weeks ago. If you’ve never seen one of these, that’s quite understandable, as the Internet Movie Cars Database shows the ZiL 164 appearing only in hard-to-pronounce films that even I haven’t…
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Diecast Delights: Barkas B1000 in 1:43
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Here’s something I’ve noticed about advertisements for 1:43 scale models in magazines: often the scale model advertised will be priced well north of $75.00, and the ad will make a huge fuss about the model possessing a certificate of authenticity. You know, to address the rampant problem of counterfeit scale models of cars. Because at…
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Diecast Delights: ZiL 130 in 1:43 by Ultra
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If this ZiL 130 seems vaguely familiar to you, that might be because its mug is featured in the opening credits of FX’s new documentary drama The Americans, a sequence also notable for a GAZ 21 that gets wantonly blowed up. You might also remember that back in December we saw a much larger and…
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ZiL 118 in 1:43 by IST
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IST has recently released a scale model of everyone’s favorite bespoke V8-powered Russian minibus from the 1960s, the ZiL 118 “Yunost.” That’s right, this is a 1:43 model of the luxury minibus based on the ZiL 111 limousine, which were handbuilt at Moscow’s ZiL factory from 1961 till 1970. Originally, around 2000 of these were…
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Soviet Buses in 1:43 Are Sturdier, Less Perturbed by Traffic Hijinks Than Other Diecast Buses
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Remember these buses? They’re the ones you see shrugging and continuing on their way after getting clipped by Ladas overtaking traffic in reverse in those Russian dashcam videos. In addition to the Budapest-based Ikarus factory that supplied buses for the entire Eastern Bloc and for a time even had an assembly facility in Indiana, the…
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Soviet Police Cars in 1:43 Are Cooler, Weirder Than Most Other Diecast Cars
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Not all Eastern Bloc police agencies were condemned to cars that hit 100km/h in 22 seconds flat. Some lucky departments got cars that managed to hit that speed in a blistering 19 seconds, and could maintain high speeds for entire minutes at a time, until the benzine ran out and they had to pull over…
