Category: Le Mans

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.

The Monopole Incident

Published 01/16/23

No, you are not seeing double. The photo above is also not a half-assed clever trick of photography. I really do have two X84. And why would somebody buy two units of the exact same model? Because that somebody is clumsy and stupid 😣. I bought the first X84 #52 in early November last year, and was very happy with it. As usual, as soon as it arrived, I removed it from the box for inspection and placed it on my display shelves. A few days later I got it out from the display to photograph it. Just like I always do. Just like I have done for years and years.

Interestingly, NO damage to the paint anywhere else, only where the resin cracked.

And that’s when disaster came to town. While setting it up for the first(!) shot, I dropped it 😫. Almost 20 years collecting models and I dropped a model (no, really). I was paying attention to the camera and not the model, and I placed it to close to the edge of the track diorama. Physics being physics, it fell off and crashed to the tiled floor about 100 cm below. Meanwhile, I looked on dumbfounded, torn between smacking myself once or smacking myself twice.

If I was any good with full-body painting, I’m confident it could be repairable. Alas, I’m not…

Since it is a resin model, as you can see on the pics above, it cracked in the middle. The seats snapped off, as did the number plate’s lights on the side. The seats I recovered, yet I never found the lights. I thought about fixing it, however that would demand a full repaint. And that, unfortunately, is outside of my (meager) modeling skills. Besides, I would also have to fabricate new lights somehow and buy or fabricate decals. With all that, I decided against it.

My second X84 #52 is safe and sound.

So I had two options: bin it and forget about the X84 #52 or get a new one. I really liked the model, and I already had done all the research and written the review. So I went back to eBay and fortunately found a second one, also brand new. And as painfully expected, more expensive than what I payed on the first one 😤. As always, stupidity doesn’t come for free, it always has a price.

So there you have it, kids. Pay attention (don’t be stupid) or pay the price 😣.