Confessions of a Stobart sinner

As a new year is almost upon us and it's a time for making resolutions and fresh starts, I have a terrible sin to confess. Well okay, it really isn't at all bad in the grand scheme of things, but to a certain small sector of society I have committed a series of heinous crimes. So, what am I doing that is so awful? It's quite simple really - I've upset the Stobart Spotters with an intentional programme of destroying Stobart models by repainting and converting them into other forms.

Nice models, shame about the livery. That can be corrected though!

I'm sure every one of you has heard of Eddie Stobart, or 'Unsteady Eddie' as I call them: they are the Apple of the haulage world, having taken an average product and used clever marketing to create a cult following. Stobart Spotters are an extremely fanatical bunch who will obsessively write down the names of every Stobart vehicle they see and buy any model with a Stobart logo on, and act as if Stobart is sacred and the only haulage company on the roads, with no other firm's lorries getting so much as a second glance. There are so many other hauliers out there who quietly get on with the job of moving goods and don't feel the need for all this publicity-whoring, and frankly the Stobart fleet is quite standardised and not even that interesting. There, I said it - I think Stobart is boring!

There are thousands of these and they only cost £3 so where's the harm in repainting one?

With such a keen market out there, it comes as no surprise that any model vehicle with the Stobart name on will be a good seller, so there have been far more models in this livery than any other firm. Prices can get very silly at first as collectors are desperate to get their hands on something new that no one else has: I well recall the bidding frenzy on an unreleased model that somehow escaped from the Chinese factory, which pushed it up to a substantial three-figure sum, only for the exact same model to appear in the Stobart Shop a few months later priced at just £20. Authenticity isn't even particularly important as there have been countless fictional models of vehicles that were never actually operated by Stobart, and I often joke that you could stick Stobart logos on a turd and someone would pay good money for it as a "unique one-off collectors' item"!

Another one gets the chop, on its way to a better life...

...and here is the finished product. Not a trace of Stobart remains.

So what has all this got to do with me? Well, as a modelmaker who is blessed/cursed with an ability to see things not for what they are but for what they could become, I take great delight in buying Stobart models and (to use the trendy terminology) 'repurposing' or 'upcycling' them into new and better forms. Modifying an existing model into a different form of Stobart vehicle is acceptable and many cases actually increases its value as it has become a one-off that Spotters will fight over, but repainting it into a non-Stobart livery is another matter entirely and something the Spotters frown upon. Depending what I intend to make, the work I do can range from simply removing the Stobart names and leaving the green livery, through complete or partial repaints to using just some of the parts on other models, and I enjoy combining bits from various sources to produce a one-off vehicle.

A simple one. T.J. Whyatt adopted the old Stobart livery as his own so everyone thinks his lorry is ex Stobart, but it isn't.

Although prices can be ridiculous, a bit of patience pays off as the models eventually become widely available and demand goes down, and most of mine came either from the Stobart Shop or eBay, where large quantities of Stobart models can always be found. At one time, the former were selling the Superleague Scanias for just £10, cheaper than any other Oxford lorries, so I confess to buying several purely to use as chassis donors for resin cabs, and they have now found their way into my fairground fleet in very different and often unrecognisable forms. While the Spotters condemn this as sacrilege, my attitude is that I am taking common mass-produced models of which there are many thousands, and creating something truly unique and hand-built from them. Of course, by removing some from circulation, I could also claim I am making the remaining ones more valuable to their owners!

Believe it or not, this Foden Alpha started life as a Stobart Scania.

I suppose I should be thankful to Stobart really, as without them we wouldn't have such a wide range of models to choose from. For instance, many of the excellent modern trucks made by Oxford Diecast first appeared in the Atlas Editions Stobart series, and there is now enough demand to justify producing models of some of the one-off vehicles in the fleet. As an example, Atlas have recently made 'Sammy Shammy', the lorry used by the cleaning team, which is a lovely model of an MAN TGL that we probably wouldn't get any other way. The Spotters won't approve but I feel this would make a great fairground vehicle so that is the destiny of my example, which may be the only one to get repainted.

To be honest I really don't care what the Stobart Spotters might think of me as I find the whole Stobart cult rather contemptible, and I have no intention of stopping. In fact, I've started to take a perverse pleasure in knowing that I'm upsetting them but there's nothing they can do about it, and it can be amusing to see their over-reactions as if what I'm doing is the end of the world. I have lost count of the amount of Stobart models that have 'suffered' at my hands, but as long as there are affordable ones out there and I keep having the inspiration to create other things from them, I will carry on sinning by chopping and changing them. Happy New Year, Stobart Spotters!

Once a boring old Stobart curtainsider, now a unique dodgem load. Much better.