Mucking around with the toy Honda unboxing video got me thinking about the other die-cast cars sitting on the window sill of my office. That's when I suddenly remembered a crucial aspect of toy car road-testing from my childhood. Until then, I'd completely forgotten about it.
It was known simply as the 'skid test', because we didn't then know words like 'oversteer' or expressions like 'dab of oppo'; and anyway, oppo - dabbed or otherwise - was not possible in a car with no steering, especially when you weren't in it.
New toy car? Try the skid test. First you needed a large, flat and shiny surface; in my case the top of the 18-seater exquisitely French-polished walnut dining table in the ancestral home. The test involved launching the car with a slight flick of the wrist, to introduce an incipient spin that could, with a bit of luck, turn into a beautiful controlled drift. Here's an example.
Exploring the fuzzy edge of handling in a way that you couldn't in a real car; i.e. on a desk.
What we learned, quite quickly, was that different cars behaved quite differently in the skid test. They had distinctive handling characteristics, if you like. The king of skid-test cars was my Matchbox Superfast Pontiac Trans-Am, but that wasn't available for this experiment, so…
Professional toy car handler on a closed circuit.
See? The Crown Comfort Taxi can hold a better oversteering line than the stubby Porte. This was all very exciting in the days before Sega Rally, although be assured that Sega Rally, when it came along, was massively better.
As in real driving, tyre choice is paramount, as I hope this final test makes clear. Note comedy slo-mo voice at end of clip.
The previously untried brown skid test.
I do hope this has been useful.
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Comments (213)
I just bought an alfaromeo 8c today
Nice bro. It's definitely not an micro car right?
yes it isnt but i have been collecting all types of cars from hotwheels to 1:18 maisto, burago and a lot of others I have about 150 model cars in total
Did I just spend my time watching grown up man playing with toy cars? Yes
Did I enjoy every little bit of it? HELL YES.
Love that Slow Motion Model Rides very much! <3
My personal Rating for the 3 Cars:
First Car: Best Slow Motion and for that i ignore the terrible Wheelnoise and give 8/10
Second Car: Same Wheel Noise Problem and not the best Slow Motion, so i give a 6/10
Third Car: Most Potential cause it has Suspension and Rubber Wheels. I am gently and give a 4/10 for the good Slow Motion..
The Crash made me think like on the Picture... :>
Greets
Drago :)
You get a bump just for the Hogan's Heros image.
:) It´s just what i thought of but thank you! :>
Here's the youtube link to the aforementioned daft video, if you have three minutes you need to kill. It's definitely rubbish, ambitious possibly. Any pointers on technique gratefully received. I think I haven't quite reached the dizzying heights of your poached egg video, have I? Apologies for my Brummie accent, I'm stuck with it.
youtu.be/6JvMtA0q964
That's a great achievement. It's even worse than my film.
Then I've achieved the pinnacle of my film making career, the DVD could have 'worse than my film says TV's James May' on the cover. Can I quote you? Though the way quotes in reviews work these days only the '...a great achievement' bit would be...
Read moreThese videos are awesome on so many levels. I remember another critical test we used to conduct in grade school. A crash test. We used to line up hot wheels cars opposite of each other on the wooden chalk ledge of the school chalk board and run them at each other as hard as we could to simulate a head on collision. The car that shed its body from the chassis lost. I was the champion using an 1970s era Ford land yacht sedan of some sort. I distinctly remember the class bully bringing in his Mack Truck hot wheel for an epic showdown, which resulted in the truck being dispatched in pieces after only one round. I was the king of the crash test dummies. ;)