NASCAR, F1, Indy, Le Mans and more: Time to fill a race car display case

Welcome to the latest chapter of Operation: Get more cars out of their boxes. Having liberated my Tomica collection from its packaging during the Christmas holidays, it was time to turn my attention to the racing cars. Don’t worry, I keep the boxes. I love a good DLM, but I’m not David Tilley!

I’ve had a couple of cases of 1:64 rally cars on display for a few years but never had the space for the track cars to join them. That changed late last summer, when I bought a Carney wall display. I love Carney cases but it’s not feasible for me to buy them direct from the States because cross-border shipping is expensive. However Diecast Depot in Edmonton, Alberta – sadly now online-only after the retail store closed last year – had a few in stock and cut me a deal on this one when the one I originally ordered turned out to be damaged. We were passing through Edmonton, so I was able to pick it up in person.

(find Carney display cases on eBay)

It’s a 144-car display with the angled slots for the models. I figured I should be able to fill it fairly easily! Here it is nicely packed, then DLM’d, and finally on the wall. I then emptied a few storage boxes to see what we had.

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But where to begin? I went for NASCAR first. I have a few dozen stock car models, old and new. I picked out some of my favourites and in they went, leaving a few spaces for some 2020 issues that I hope to receive in the next few weeks. They include the Alabama Gang models that I featured here last year as well some of the fabulous Ford Galaxie 427s models from Racing Collectables.

The NASCARs are on average the biggest models in this display, so they went up the top, where some of the smaller stuff proved harder to see. Two rows down, 10 to go!

Next up are two lines of GT cars. The lineup runs all the way from the Shelby Collectibles Aston DBR1 and Daytona Coupe via the Kyosho McLaren F1s to the Hot Wheels Ford GT LM, with quite a few gaps along the way, of course! At the end of the line, parked side-on, you can just see the Auto World Kingswood Lead Sled, which is the only car that won’t fit in the case on an angle!

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The second of the two lines contains cars that raced at Le Mans. Some of my favourites are the white Kyosho Ferrari 512 BB LM and my newly acquired Tomica Canon Porsche 928, which is based on the Richard Lloyd Racing 924 Carrera GTR that raced at Le Mans in 1981. At the far end are a couple of Le Mans prototypes that didn’t have a home elsewhere.

The endurance racing theme continues on the next row with a line of Porsches in chronological order from the 906 Carrera 6 to the 991 GT3 R. The models here are from Kyosho, Minichamps, Spark and Tomica. More on my Porsche race cars here!

From sports and GT cars, to touring cars: next come a bunch of 1990s DTM racers from Alfa, BMW, Mercedes and Opel, as well as an EAC (dealer model) M4 DTM. I have more versions of the Mercedes 190s and C-Classes and a second Alfa but didn’t want to fill the row with too many of the same car. Instead, there’s space for an extra here, even with two premium versions of the Matchbox V8 Supercars Ford Falcon EL perched on the end.

We move from Germany to Japan for the next two rows, with a mixture of race cars from different series, grouped by manufacturer. There’s the fantastic Tomica Moon Craft, Nissan sportscars and Skyline Silhouettes, some Calsonics, Mazdas from Daytona and Le Mans, three Toyotas and two Subarus.

By this point we’re considerably farther down the wall so the smaller single-seater models are more visible. We begin with a line of IndyCars (the underrated Hot Wheels Pro Racing models, some Greenlights and a random EPI Shell promo) before we reach three rows of Formula 1 to complete the cabinet.

The first of the F1s are all Ferraris, consisting of my recent Kyosho acquisitions. Then there’s a couple of one-offs: a Hot Wheels Formula E that I swapped the wheels on and the Tarmac Works Dallara F3. Two more Tarmacs, the BTCC Volvo and Type R, lurk at the end until I need the space for something else!

Below the Ferraris is a row that spans F1 history from the Tipo 159 Alfetta by Kyosho to the Spark Renault R.S.17, via more Kyoshos, a handful of Aoshima Williams and a Bburago Red Bull. We finish with an almost-dozen F1 Lotuses, all from the wonderful Kyosho Classic Team Lotus set.

At the time of writing, 13 of the 144 spaces in the new cabinet remain unfilled. It won’t stay that way for long. I struggled to get an overview of the whole display but this last one at least provides a nice perspective. At the back you can see an empty Matchbox rotating counter display. That might be the next project. Happy collecting!

(follow me on Instagram @diecast215)