Rust or Bust?!?! – Nigel De Zilwa

Our Co-Editor and Creative Director Nigel De Zilwa waxes but to no avail against the hard rusty bodies of Majorette’s new releases. Rolling out across the world where available is this fantastic 5 cars set by Majorette called the Vintage Rust Series. Now let’s break that down. Vintage, in this case, means a selection of cars that spans the 50’s – 80’s era and the rust, well the cars come rusted… Of course, not actual rust but a weathered look and paint job to look like rust like distressed LEVI’s. Off late, with collectors having more time on their hands a lot of them have turned to express their creativity through the intricate art of diorama creation. Some of them even turning it into a lucrative business, one thing is for sure, the scale community is not showing any signs of slowing down.

This has resulted in certain customizers making customs based on some of the diorama environments which in turn has led to a mass-market movement of certain brands offering up cars that fit these environments. For example, if you were to make or get a barn-find diorama putting a brand new Ferrari PISTA on it isn’t going to look very authentic. Put a Majorette Mustang with a rust finish on it and bang you’re being featured and hash-tagged in everyone’s insta feeds.

The TOYOTA CELICA GT

This 70’s JDM ICON was rocking the street long before the SUPRA was hot stuff, the Toyota Celica GT. Now there is one thing that you must absolutely know about this car. The GT version and ONLY the GT version ran on a Porsche made 5 speed manual gearboxes. And ran with the best like the Nissan SKYLINE KPGC110, oh the times were good.

This awesome addition to your collection comes in matt black with weathered looking red racing stripes on the bonnet and rust coverage on 3 quarter of the car. Opening parts means open doors and as always, I love the plastic headlights and details like the textured grille and legible badges.

THE SCARY RENAULT 5 TURBO

Second, on our fav list is the Renault 5. This turbocharged little monster made many men need to have several underwear changes during Group B rally stages with it’s blessed by the hand of God power to weight ratio and suspension forged in the depths of hades that held the car to the ground like a freight train to hell. This was legit hot hatch in the 80’s and a lot of little boys traded in their lingerie catalogs for dreamy posters of the Renault levitating over the road on a cloud of dust while frozen onlookers dotted the background.

You get the picture. It wore the wide body well and was definitely the best-looking iteration of this model not forgetting how the designers threw out the Renault rule book by dumping the turbo behind the driver in a mid-engine setup. This car looks like it been parked by the sea for the 20 years without a fancy nano coat. Hmmm sounds good for a house by the beach diorama. The opening parts on this is the backdoor perfect for loading up a weathered surfboard. This Renault has seen better days.

RUSTY MUSTANG SALLY

If you are a fan of American Car Shows, there is no way you could have missed out on at least one episode where a Mustang is found as a barn find. Seriously how many FORD Mustangs are there dilapidated in barns across America?

This rusty Majorette Muscle was not found in a barn but could well fit into your barn diorama. For some reason this looks so dismal it looks great. I want to take it and get it restored and then auctioned off and then grow a really long beard like ZZ Top. Great detail and I especially love the teeny tiny Mustang badging across the boot lid.

BUS BACK IN TIME

Not many garages across Asia and probably Germany is without its token rusting VW T2 Bus. Either it’s a long drawn out restore job where the owner is out of money or the owner of the garage owns it and is restoring but is out of money or it’s a transport van that’s on its last spark.

Throw this into the back of your garage with some old tires against it and instantly you get your garage free loader in your garage diorama setup or photoshoot.

No.64

Finally, we see the effects of what rust has done to our No. 64 Beetle. If there was ever a great marketing example for a WD-40 sales rep, this would be it. No.64 turned up last year in one of the Vintage Classics series with a slight rusting issue over the side skirts. This year it is back, worse and we fear it may be terminal. By next year this car is going to need a completely new shell if the chassis is ok. So far, the bonnet is still attached to the car. We remain hopeful.