On my previous post on my hawl, I finally found a few goodies of which the ‘70 Datsun 510 was one of them. On my 108th post I will be talking about one of the new casting by Matchbox that I was anticipating.
During the Matchbox International Gathering of Friends held around July of last year, one of the propose new models showed a picture of the actual 510 that participated in the East Africa Safari Rally.
The picture above was screen shot from a video by Lamleygroup.
At this point I said to myself, now we will have a true representation of the 510 4 door rally car which would be a great companion to the Hot Wheels which has the 2 door instead.
So how does the Matchbox compare to the Hot Wheels?
For me I had sort of a mixed feeling about what Matchbox did. For one compare to the Hot Wheels, the color used was way off. While Hot Wheels used the chassis and the front grill and headlights as one mold, Matchbox molded the headlights, front grill and part of the lower part of the front body with the interior. To make it worst there was no tampo on the front so it really look so incomplete that it doesn’t look like the 510 at all.
Unlike the Hot Wheels there is no side graphics at all which again seems like an unfinished car. The wheels reminded me of the Superfast era of Matchbox which is nice yet this is far from the wheels used on the actual rally. To me however it wasn’t much of a distraction.
Where they focus on the tampo was the upper part of the vehicle. A roof rack was somehow added with some equipment which again deviates from the original vehicle. I don’t mind so much of the roof rack as it gave a bit of difference between it and the Hot Wheels. However the paint wasn’t fully applied in sort of 3 dimension as you’ll notice the spare tire only got painted on the upper part and the rest is still orange.
Both Hot Wheels and Matchbox lacks tampo on the rear as well but Matchbox did something different by having the bumper molded with the chassis and adding a rear light connected to the bumper unlike the Hot Wheels where is was molded with the body.
So what do I think? I think if more graphics were added, this could have a potential to look better as seen on Japan Nostalgic.
Of course for customizers this is an added bonus(?) as there is a potential to customize without having to remove any tampos on the side. I for one felt it is nice to have this casting although incomplete. Who knows I may do something about it. Stay tune.