Herpa's new Opel Manta is a winner

[Robbman]

Wonder how hard it would be to fab up some side view mirrors...

[sirenwerks]

Thanks Lee.  I'd been lowering the MTL racks from the beginning as well as replacing the ladders and painting the decks...

What ladders are you using? They look finer than GMM's (I keep hoping Trainworx will release a fret of ladders; the ladders on the GS gon are works of art, IMO.)

Good find, wish it was a Chevy Vega though to fit my era! Not to cause thread drift but since we're talking about cars mid 60's and later to fill autoracks...

N scale Vegas should be the responsibility of ExactRail, since it manufactured the Vert-A-Pac in N. (May I start writing ad nausea about the need for 60s vehicles now?)

[cfritschle]

Carter - the N autos in Europe - are they solely for model railroaders or is there a model car hobby in N similar to the huge HO scale collectors market?

Lou,

There must be some collectors of N scale vehicle models in Europe because I have been told that is where 90% of the Wiking, Busch and Herpa sales are made.   Also, special runs of N scale vehicle models, which appear to be primarily for collectors, are common in Europe.  But even in Europe, the N scale vehicle collector's market appears to be quite small compared to the HO scale vehicle collector's market. 

A better source of information on the European market would be Bill Cawthon, who posts with some regularity on the N Scale Vehicle Association's Yahoo group, and has a much better insight than I do into the ongoings of the HO and N scale European vehicle markets.  And of course, Markus Schiavo has first hand knowledge of the European scene, so you might try posting the question to the NSVA Yahoo group.

Carter

[cfritschle]

Good find, wish it was a Chevy Vega though to fit my era! Not to cause thread drift but since we're talking about cars mid 60's and later to fill autoracks... It appears (to me at least) that TomyTec also introduced some new cars:

1969-ish Toyota Landcruiser - hit the American market around the same time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Land_Cruiser
).


1964-ish Subaru 360 - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_360)


1974 Toyota Carolla -


The S.

Just a heads up.  If you want to use the Tomytec 1:150 scale vehicle models to fill the MTL auto racks, very few will fit into the lower decks without some modifications to lower the "ride height" of the vehicles. 

Also, I try to post comparison photos of the Tomytec models with common 1:160 scale models in my Rail Images album.  And while the Tomytec vehicles are very nice, the "extra size" can be noticable if the prototype was commonly seen on the streets of North America.

For example, here is the Tomytec Land Cruiser with the Atlas Ford F-150.



And perhaps even more noticable, here is the Toyota Corolla with the Atlas Ford Fairmont.



However, since the Subaru 360 was not very common, and the prototype was so small, it does not look out of place next to the Wiking VW Beetle.



Carter

[bbussey]

What ladders are you using? They look finer than GMM's (I keep hoping Trainworx will release a fret of ladders; the ladders on the GS gon are works of art, IMO.)

I'm pretty sure they are GMM, but they could be Plano.  They may appear more fine because they are painted black.  They all are an improvement over the stock ladders that come with the model.

[sizemore]

TomyTec is actually 1:150 though, isn't it?

Yea, but cfritschle pretty much showed that with a little modeling genius they can be pulled off. If that Carolla was "cruising" down an empty backroad...wouldnt look to bad, even for 1/150 it is a little large. The Subby and the LandCruiser are close enough.

By todays definition my FJ is a "big" vehicle, it's larger than a Rubicon, here is a shot of it next to its "great uncle" thats been lifted 6"-8"


The S.