READERS:

I will be referring to him as the ProMoCo, because it's shorter, and I'm afraid I'll misspell Missouri. Although I've gotten some emails from other readers, ProMoCo and I have exchanged dozens of messages. If you've read the Alerts, you know he's helped me get caught up, and spotted a couple I've missed. I like some of the things he's said about collecting and his collection. Let me share what he uses as criteria to collect Promotionals. "You see, one of the most important criteria in determining whether a car is one I will collect is that the car must have a unique paint scheme OR package design which distinguishes it from all similar cars sold by retail sellers of diecast cars. Thus, I don't include in my collection any car (even though it may be offered as a promotion) if an identical car with identical graphics and packaging can be purchased at a NASCAR collectibles store, general merchandise store, toy store, etc. Simply put, it has to be something you can't get anywhere else." He's also helped me with answering questions like "What race did the Sam Bass BuzzBee paint scheme race in" and "How big is your NASCAR tire?". Thanks, and I enjoy "talking" with you.

I'm still looking for more readers to share a little about their collecting and collections with me (I'll ask before I put you in the Newsletter!).





EDITORIAL

Let's start an editorial, kind of a discussion. Please, feel free to email replies, responses and questions; I'll respond to what I can, and publish some of the best.

What is a "promotional"? I guess it should be considered to be merchandise that promotes a specific brand or product, in our case, little cars from NASCAR sponsors. With that definition, we can further break that down to Exclusives (doesn't always fit the definition), branded collectibles for purchase, collectibles for Proof of Purchase, or as I like to call them 'Mail-in PoPs', and collectibles with purchase, or attached promos. I will be concentrating on the latter two. I'll include the first two when I can, but I'm looking for the 'Free' cars.

Some examples of the first two would be the matched Stock Car and Stock Rod sets I found "Exclusively" at Eckerds. (Pictures on the Exclusives Picture Page) The second case would be the NAPA, Cingular and Aaron's cars, where you find them "Exclusively" at those outlets. The best example of a Mail-in PoP is the Kellogg's Transporter and Car for nothing more than 6 PoPs, or 2 for just the car. As long as you eat cereal, the only cost is the stamp. On the opposite extreme is the #24 Jeff Gordon Pepsi car-in-a-can. I didn't get the car (read: couldn't afford it), and I forgot the particulars, but it was something like UPCs for 2 or 4 cases and $8.00. (I ran into an old case and now I may get one after all - watch for my next Alert)

I've been hyping the product attached collectibles since Issue #1! You have the car right away, not a month or two later, and no cutting out forms, little bar codes, and saving receipts.

This brings about the discussion portion of the editorial. Do you think the more bothersome Mail-ins are/will be worth more, all things equal? Do you think the collectible saved still attached to the matching product is worth more? I went to great lengths to get a box of Excedrin PM with the #92 car. There were many more Extra Strength with the PM car, and some stores didn't even have matched sets. Just like you could get all 5 different cars with Golden Grahams, but it pictured the #45 Sprint car. Are the Wheaties, Cheerios, Honey-Nut Cheerios, and Golden Grahams where the box picture matches the car worth more? Of course, I have duplicates of cars, but to save space, cut just the top banner of the box, or in the case of Excedrin, the car is unopened in the display box, but I got a headache, and I used the product! Will someone give me $10.00 more (the price of the product, or even more), because I saved them together, in 5 years, or will it be valued the same as the car by itself? I guess you can go through any 'antique mall' and see a trend, and also notice many everyday things that we took for granted 10 or 20 years ago - not even collectibles - 'boy, I wish I'd saved that!'.





Shell - EPI's Claim to Fame

I didn't know I was gonna write this column 5 or so years ago, so I wasn't taking notes. So this is coming from my recollections. I think it was the Christmas season during or just after the Circle K Power Pit Stop promo. I don't remember what brought me into the Shell station, but I saw the fairly standard gas station promo signs. Buy at least 8 gallons of gas, and get this for free, or a small price. I don't even remember which it was any more.

These 3 cars came individually blister packed on a card, tires on the card, top up. In a "cut out your own collectible card" area, there's some driver, owner, and race car data printed on the back, and a picture of the car on the front. These 'EPI Sports Collectibles' cars from Charlotte, N.C. (made in China) are unspectacular, and according to the Diecast Digest price guide, the only race cars they produced!

The three car set includes Bobby Rahal's #28 Shell Reynard Indy, driven by Bryan Herta. #44 Shell Busch Grand National Monte Carlo owned and driven by Bobby Labonte and Joe Gibbs' #18 Interstate Batteries/Shell Fire & Ice Chevy, also driven by Bobby. The car data includes things like wheelbase, length and height. I'll use my Scale Calculator program to verify the scale on these cars since the measurements are so conveniently included (and interiors aren't). The pictures on the front of the card made it easier to compare paint and graphics, no searching Internet archives for 6 year old cars. (Although the Indy car is not a great angle, head on).


The two stock cars almost seem to be made by different companies. The WC car has a metal chassis, the Busch car is plastic. The bodies, and most notably the grilles are different between the two Monte Carlos, but this makes sense, although I can't verify it. Remember, (if I'm not mistaken) the WC cars are current model year bodies, Busch cars can be up to 5 years old (makes you wonder if Bobby bought his previous season's car to run the Busch series!) The interiors are not applicable, the windshield, rear, side and quarter windows are a black plastic part (DieCast Digest refers to them as "Black Window"). At least they're molded with front and rear glass stiffeners and the driver side net. The Indy car is equally unimpressive, the plastic seat and steering wheel do not show much detail. The diecast body has fairly plain wing shapes and not much detail for side pod or body air inlets.

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The chassis look a lot like Racing Champions. The metal one has the same basic details, engine bottom with tranny, exhaust, rear axle, fuel cell, and some vague suspension parts as the plastic chassis. The plastic looks a bit better, the metal is a little less detailed, chalk it up to material and the molding process. The Indy car is just a flat plastic bottom with the EPI logo.



As far as paint and graphics, the first thing I notice (of course) is the lack of race product decals, even the Goodyear over the front wheelwell! The Goodyear Eagle is on the Stock Cars' one piece plastic tire/wheels. Again, the manufacturing differences show in the wheels - the #44 has a better looking wheel, on the #18, the sidewall come straight down to the wheel edge, not even a rim. The Indy car has no lettering on the tires at all. Overall, the paint seems thick, and pooled in areas. Some of the graphics are smeared or just not aligned right. Some paint didn't even go into some of the molded-in details. A couple of examples; there's some white left where the black stripe didn't cover the molded in fuel filler detail. Or, to pick on two things at once, Bobby Labonte's name was not aligned right on the roof of one car, and the bottom half of his name is missing because the paint did not go into the door outline groove. On the Indy car, you're looking right at the nose, so you see all the wrong or missing decals, even the Mercedes (engine) 3-pointed star is missing!

Dimension-wise, I used my shareware Scale Calculator program to convert the measurements. I use inches, cm and mm interchangeably because, I can (that is the program does the conversions), and because sometimes it's easier to use that side of the ruler than trying to count 32nds of an inch! I could have also gotten answers directly in feet (or miles or meters) if the measurements were not in inches.

The Busch car wheelbase is 105", overall length is 199" and the height is 50.5". The Winston Cup car is longer and lower at 110", 204", and 50". Finally, the Indy car wheelbase is 116", 185" long, and 32" high, I imagine that's at the rollbar (looks the same height as the rear wing).

When I measure the models, the #44 wheelbase is just shy of 43mm, that converts to 108.3", but 42mm is 105.8", so in either case, the axles are a little far apart. Overall length is 3 1/8", that works out to 200", that's good enough for me. The overall height is .918" or 58 3/4", more than 8" over. Another car website showed a ground clearance of 5". Ground Clearence on the die cast is 3mm or about 7 1/2" - mostly caused by the tires and chassis being too high. I attribute the extra to a poor roof profile on the model.

The #18 wheelbase is 1/32" short of 1.75", so that's 2" short of 112", or exactly right. Overall length, 7.8cm is way short at 196.5". Height is measured at .876" or 56", 6" over spec. Ground Clearence was even more than the #44 at 3.5mm or 8.8" - almost 4" too high.

The Indy Car from nose tip to wing trailing edge measures 3 1/16" - 196", but from nose to the end of the tranny, it's only 7.4cm or about 185", that's more like it! The wheelbase was a little tricky because the axles are kinda wobbly, I took 2 measurements, with the wheels pushed together and then spread apart. The silly millimeter difference equals about 2 1/2", and when I used the average it works out to 114 1/2", just a tad short. At the top of the rollbar, I measured .594" and that's way high at 38", 6" too high!

I have to complain about the tires here. This complaint applies to a lot of collectibles, but since I'm detailing measurements here, I'll point it out. The tires are too big, maybe the wheels too, but I think I'll save the details for the next issue. I have some tire measurements, but I'm trying to get some info from Goodyear or a racing team. Suffice to say the EPI tires are too tall and 40% to 50% too wide. I have a picture here comparing the EPI and RC Kit I mention later in this issue...



To summarize, the EPI cars are just blister packed, not display boxed like many promos since. The paint and graphics are not great, but with the exception of small decals, pretty accurate. No interior and the chassis has minimal detail. The 'built-in' collectible card was a nice touch, and the technical data gave me plenty of fodder for ranting about the scale. The #44 is the right length, but the wheelbase is too long, #18 has the right wheelbase but is way too short. The Indy car length is right, depending on where you measure, and the wobbly wheelbase is pretty close, but it's too tall. Worth having in your collection of promo cars, but keep them toward the back with the Circle K Power Pit Stop cars, unless you're a Bobby Labonte fan.











Coming Up!

I haven't bought a car from a store in a while, but I finally broke down and bought one of those Racing Champions Die Cast Model Kits - and Boy, I'm glad I did! I've often thought some die casts almost looked perfect - if I could just get to the interior to paint the dash and gauges or add hoses and spark plug wires to the engine. I've actually considered taking my drill to drill out the rivet so I could do some detailing, but now I don't have to!



This is a great scale model, and I use these words carefully. From the opening trunk and view of the fuel cell to the detailed plastic suspension and engine parts mounted to the metal chassis. The paint job and graphics are top job (but I will need to touch up some interior and chassis parts) and it even has scale 2 piece wheel/rubber-like Goodyear Eagles. If you read my other rant about out of scale wheels, these measure .423" by .185" wide on a wheel diameter of .265". That works out to a tire diameter of 27.07" by 11.84" wide and a 16.96" wheel, now that's really good enough for me.

Here are some pictures - the unopened kit, and the assembled 'before' car used to demonstrate tire width and ground clearence differences. Why did I say 'before' - stick around to find out. If this works out well, I might have to try the Transporter w/car and the 1/43 scale Dodge Daytona which happens to be the right base color (and close enough to a Superbird) to add some #43 decals! (anybody know where I can get some?)

In the coming issues, I'll have a section on detailing this little gem.





In the next issue, I will continue the history of my collection. I will continue with the toy cars, with one saving grace. It seems I didn't run into any Promos for a while, because my next set was the McDonald's/Hot Wheels sticker-activity set of #94 Wild Bill Elliott, a couple years later. I used my coupon at co-sponsor Service Merchandise and bought the Transporter and Gold Chrome car. We'll take a look at those and continue the rant on scale tires next time, as always, let me know if there is something else I should include in my site and Newsletter.

Christmas is coming, look at these ornaments on my wife's WebPage at http://members.safepages.com/genesis_art/CHRISTMS.HTM. If you order now, she can paint something special or make sure you get your color. (Later in the year, you may have to take what you can get!)

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