New Silver Arrows?

Oh yes! Minichamps released a few new ones:

- Typ B #1 - 1935 AVUSrennen (H.Stuck)
- Typ A Rennlimousine ("Typ Lucca") #4 - 1935 AVUSrennen (B. Rosemeyer) 
- Typ C/D #125 - 1939 Grossglockner Hill Climb (H. P. Muller)
- Typ D Stromlinie #18 - 1938 French Grand Prix (R. Hasse)

I first found out about these models in early 2020 (I talked about them here). At the time, however, I was really skeptical that Minichamps would ever release them. After all, Silberpfeile collectors are a rare breed. Yet, to my surprise, in March Minichamps did actually release some of the models from that list. I found the ones above on eBay, and few online retailers are also offering them. Nonetheless, Minichamps made only a limited quantity of each (200 or 300?). And what that means is that they are already hard to find online 😣. Therefore, DO NOT wait to get them.

Slow day at the office

Well, more like slow weeks at the office… You must have noticed that model reviews have become somewhat scarce around here. Well, that’s because my toys & candy fund has been a bit limited lately. You know, because of stuff like coffee, car insurance, clothes for the kids and other grown-up issues 🙄. It honestly sucks to be a responsible adult. Any how, I expect that things will get better by next month (fingers crossed!), and then I’ll have new stuff to show. Even so, I will upload a new review this next Friday. Yay!

In the meantime I’m going through my previous reviews, fixing broken links, proof-reading and sometimes remaking photos. Today, for instance, I made new shots of some of my Silver Arrows. It’s been a long while since I photographed a Silberpfeil.

Le Mans 1968

Found this one yesterday. All in all, 33 minutes of very nice footage of the 1968 race. As a bonus, it has an English voice-over narration (the original film is in French). And best of all, this time there isn’t that typical gut-wrenching seizure-inducing awfully terrible elevator music that you hear a lot in many of the 60s and 70s documentaries.

PS: This is the third nice film I found about the 1968 race. While from some years you can’t find zilch, for some reason 1968 was prolific.

Books – Ford vs Ferrari

“Ford vs Ferrari – The battle for supremacy at Le Mans 1966” – John Starkey

I’m pretty sure everyone here already saw Ford v Ferrari the film. You didn’t 😲??? What do you mean, you didn’t see it?!? Unless you just shipped in from a colony on Venus (or Uranus), something is wrong… No, it’s not a fantastic work of art in cinematography, far from that. Well, Le Mans the film also kind of (royally?) sucked in that regard. Yet, that’s beside the point. The fact is that both are GREAT car movies. And from that perspective, Ford v Ferrari is maybe even better than Le Mans. So if you’re a gearhead or car person, you need to watch it. ASAP.

Anyway, the book is not about the film. It’s about the events that inspired the film. And in terms of a literary piece of work, it’s pretty good. The only part that I didn’t like (or better, that I missed), was the lack of coverage on Ferrari and their cars. The book is “Ford-centric”, so not much is said about Ferrari’s cars. And we’re talking about the 330 P3 (among others), which is undoubtedly one of the most gorgeous Ferraris ever. The book has a ton of photos, so more Ferrari eye candy would have been nice. Despite not much on Maranello’s cars, the author presents the facts that lead to Ford’s victory at Le Mans in 1966 in a pretty good way. Their are other books out there on those events, however John Starkey is right to the point. And shows lots of photos.

This book, fortunately (for once), is still available in paperback format, and best of all, cheap (about $20). And because of the photos, I strongly recommend the regular book version and not the e-book version. The e-book is cheaper, yet for photos a Kindle is far from great, so if you can, go for the tree-unfriendly regular book version.

Auto Union’s Silberpfeile

After I found that old Grand Prix racing video I posted a few days ago, I stumbled upon this. This one is exclusively about Auto Union’s Silver Arrows. Almost 42 minutes long, the footage is pretty good. Yet, being quite old, it is far from the “movies quality” we’re currently used to. And of course, the race noises and tires screeching dubbed over the scenes are not exactly high quality…🙄 Even so, pretty nice for the Silberpfeil fan.

Golden Age of Grand Prix Racing

Though this has been on YouTube for many years, I first saw it last night. The original documentary is pretty old (80s, perhaps?), so the video quality is far from what we expect today. Even so, it’s a delightful 49 minutes about the Golden Era of Grand Prix racing. The last third part of the film is almost solely about the Silberpfeile, which of course was the best part in my opinion. In fact, this was the first time I saw color footage on the Silver Arrows. All in all, a very nice documentary about the Silberpfeile and something on their predecessors.