#479 SCALEXTRIC COCHES MÍTICOS ALTAYA (Part 1)

“Scalextric Coches Míticos” was the second Scalextric collection released by Altaya. Altaya is a publishing house from Spain mostly known for selling their collections in fascicles you can buy at press kiosk weekly. After a few dozens of fascicles you have your complete book plus something else. In this case, it was Scalextric cars… but not any cars, but some of the most mythical cars ever made by Scalextric Spain.

The first collection from Altaya and Scalextric was a complete circuit with 4 cars. The first car was a Ford Focus, the second was a Seat Cordoba, both in rally decorations. Later, this collection was expanded with two Formula ones: a Minardi (at the time driven by Marc Gené) and an Arrow (driven by Pedro de la Rosa). That collection was not so interesting, since most collectors are just interested in cars, and don’t want any more tracks. I guess the people at Altaya noticed that the fascicles with car parts were sold much better than the rest, so the second collection they released comprised exclusively cars.
I will show all the cars in the next two entries, today I want to focus on the books. They are two blue folders with some index tabs. Each fascicle included one page to be separated and placed in the right chapter, for example:

• “Coches de Colección”: Showed many variants of one Scalextric model

• “Coches de Competición”: Told the story of a real car

• “Avences Técnicos”: Told the story of some invention or exploit in the motor world

• “Trucos”: Showed how to build you Scalextric models (they were sold in unassembled parts) and how to customize them for competition.

• “Historia de la Competición”: Nice reviews of competitions from the last decades.

The books are great, but as said before, the main argument for selling this book was to collect 12 reedited car models from the 60s, 70s and 80s, and if you subscribed, you would also get a nice suitcase to carry them. Many of these cars were sought-for collectibles, could only be found for maybe hundred Euros. A few of them had already been re-released as “Vintage” models, and now, they could be bought for around 40 Euros each… Each car came in four parts: body, chassis, wheels and motor, and each fascicle costed 6 Euros, if I am not wrong, or a little less if you subscribed or if you were a member of the Scalextric Club.

Together with the body of the car (first part) you got a card with a printed number of it that was a proof or the number of your model within the limited edition. The problem with the limited edition is that nobody told me how many units of each car were made... I guess many, since collectors bought many “bodies” to restore old damaged cars.

I still have some advertising that was included with the first issue where every detail of the collection is explained. It is very interesting that all models are actual models except the Mercedes Wankel and the Mercedes 250 SL, which are old models taken for the photoshoot only. Final versions would have another colour and different decals.

The collection is great, and the selection of models is also perfect, but the Spanish die-hard collector would have preferred to have a Seat 600 and a Seat 850 in it. These two models would appear in later collections from Scalextric and Altaya… or Scalextric and Planeta.