[REVIEW] Tomica Ferrari 312 T3

Tomica time, Land of the Rising Sun-day, is upon us again. This entry fits just for the model maker, this is another F-series car. Today we examine Tomica F59-1, the Ferrari 312 T3. This casting entered the range in November 1978, and is a fine entrant in the line of then-current F1 cars Tomica made at this time:

It’s been some time since I have picked a Tomica racing car, this one was just sitting there, here we go. During this golden age of the brand, Tomica cast several F1 cars, as this branch of racing was becoming even more popular, and the cars were evolving. Villeneuve and Reutemann drove these. From what I can see, this specific car raced in 1978-79. As it is an open wheel open cockpit racing car, there’s not much opportunity for moving parts, but as long as the wheels move, it doesn’t need much. Detail and proportion are excellent as expected, paint is top quality, and the decals/tampos are also quite realistic, a Tomica strength. Scale is claimed to be 1:55, likely accurate - a little large, but these were small cars, and upscaling it a little made it nicer to behold, perhaps. From all angles, one can imagine it zooming around the track:

Front and rear have similar quality detail, and are wonderful if you like spoilers:

The base is plastic, a trend of the time, and contains technical and identifying detail:

I am pleased to have this in my loose collection. I generally don’t collect racing cars, but I picked up a few mint loose ones in a collection, and now they go together. A vision from days gone by:

A couple 1:1s from favcars.com and reddit: