If you weren’t asked to pace the field at Indy this year with an actual C6 (pictured), give yourself a scale-model consolation prize.
We keep hearing about how die-cast is in a sales tailspin, but at the same time there are new companies appearing on the scene left and right.
The latest: Greenlight Collectibles. Based in Indianapolis, Greenlight’s stock-in-trade to this point has been Indy-themed open-wheel cars (including all of the top drivers for 2005) and some exclusive wheel-and-paint schemes from other manufacturers’ casting rosters.
Greenlight has jumped into the fray with its first two bespoked street-car castings: a 2005 Chevy Corvette roadster Indy pace car, and a 2005 Chevy Corvette coupe Daytona pace car from the new Pace Car Garage series. Both chassis and body are made of die-cast metal, the former delicately engraved, the latter nicely tampo’ed with correct headlamp detail, badging, and of course, the correct graphics for the race.
Side mirrors, always a bugaboo in this scale, are not only molded in, but are shaped and sized correctly; the coupe has a gigantic rear wing that seems overdone but is, in fact, correct for that car. The wheels are prototypically correct in two sizes, with soft tires, but are not freewheeling. The sample we got had a price tag of $8 on it–which seemed a tad steep, but considering the limited availability of these two, it makes a little more sense.
We got hold of the 1:64 scale models, but according to the www.greenlighttoys.comWeb site, 1:24 scale models are coming. Check their Web site for distributors!
(This post originally appeared in the September 29, 2005, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)