A model Model 70!

The annual London Toy Fair takes place in January and is traditionally the venue for Oxford Diecast's announcement of new models for the year. As usual, there is a large and diverse crop with something for almost everyone, but one real surprise in the 1/76 Oxford Automobile range of special interest to me. Regular readers will know of my interest in invalid carriages but I never thought these rather esoteric vehicles would ever be modelled by any of the mainstream diecast manufacturers. I'm delighted to be proved wrong though!

Put it in H!

One of my all-time favourite scenes in The Simpsons occurs in the 1992 episode Mr. Plow, when Homer looks for a new car at the 'Place of Automobiles' run by an eastern European chap called Crazy Vaclav. The latter tries to sell him a strange little three-wheeler lettered in Cyrillic and made in a country that no longer exists, telling him in a stereotypical Slavic accent it will do 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene.

What exactly is this machine supposed to be though? Many of the cars in the series are based to some degree on real vehicles, and having become very well acquainted with the AC or Invacar Model 70 invalid carriage it occurred to me just how much Crazy Vaclav's 'put it in H' car looks like a Model 70. This uniquely British model is a very off-the-wall choice for an American show, but the likeness is too great to be a coincidence so here's my take on its backstory.

A strange little car from a country that no longer exists

Invacar involvement part 2: the return of TP

It's now been over a year since I had the privilege of driving TWC, the famous HubNut Invacar. You might think that would have been my last encounter with such a rare car but you'd be wrong and I'm proud to have been involved in an awful lot that has happened on the Invacar front in the last 12 months. When I first wrote about them way back in 2015 and expressed a vague hope that one day I might happen to see one, I never would have believed how things would turn out: I have seen no fewer than three other Invacars at close quarters over the last couple of months and spent so much time around them that they're almost becoming unremarkable. Here's the story behind the first of them...

No, it's not TWC but another Model 70!