My favorite cars

There are a lot of cars that I really like: the Tucker 48 from 1948, the Lotus S1 Esprit from 1977, and the Chevrolet Caprice Classic from 1991. But the one that’s very special to me is the Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am Special Edition from 1977. I have quite a few Pontiac Firebirds now, and the latest addition to my collection is this Custom ’67 Pontiac Firebird, which is a different colored version of one that I blogged about before.

It used to be that whenever I blog about scale models, only Pontiac Firebirds get a special tag. That’s changing now, as there is a new car that I feel is worthy of having its own tag. I first discovered Nissan Skylines last year, when I blogged about a Matchbox ’71 Nissan Skyline 2000 GTX and a Tomica Nissan Skyline 2000GT-R Racing. When I saw this Nissan Skyline H/T 2000GT-R from 1973, I decided that Nissan Skylines would get their own tag. (I’ve just added the tag to the two previously mentioned blog posts.)

Tomica Dream Motors Suimax MB

The Toys”R”Us in Alabang I went to a few weeks ago had a lot of Tomica Event Models for sale, but the one below caught my eye and there was no question that I had to buy it.

The base is plastic and the rear wheel axle is loose and noisy with no “suspension.” Aside from the wheels and the loose multi-colored plastic pieces inside the transparent rear compartment, there don’t seem to be any moving parts. Nevertheless, this is the coolest Tomica I’ve seen so far.

The one I bought was a display unit and was the last one of its kind. I had a hard time looking for its box. The sticker states that the price is around 500 pesos, but I was only charged around 350 pesos for it.

One of the main reasons I bought this model was the presence of multi-colored plastic pieces in the rear compartment. I had no idea what they represented. Later, I was very surprised to learn from Retroletra.com that this model is of “a road cleaning vehicle” and that “it seems that the inside of the rear clear box is the sucked garbage.” (I used Google Translate.) The base of the vehicle supports this claim. You can see the tubes from the front of the car to its rear, with some fans at the rear to provide the suction.

This TDM Suimax MB differs from the earlier TDM Suimax (shown below). (I got the image from http://www.takaratomy.co.jp/event/eventlist2/images/tdm_suimax_s.jpg.)

Batmobile (1989)

It’s been more than two months since I last made a blog post because I’ve been very busy at work. I’ve bought quite a few scale models since then but I’ll post about these one at a time.

The name for the scale model below is “Batmobile” according to the card, but Hot Wheels Wiki calls it “Batmobile (1989).” (It was first seen in the 1989 movie.) The scale model below is from 2018.