Corgi H376 RADIO CONTROLLED Austin mini-METRO

This is what started it all, and possibly shaped my personality into being in love with all things R/C... This was the first R/C car that I ever had, I got it as a present from Mummy and Daddy for my 8th birthday (aaawwwww!). It is a Corgi Radio Controlled car, Corgi model number H376, and distributed by Mettoy, #M5900. It is a quite accurate (considering that it's a toy) scale model of the British car, the Austin mini-Metro. I got this in 1982, when I was 8, but it is actually copyright dated 1981 on the box. Dad and Mum took me to one of the 'Toy & Hobby' chain stores (anyone who is now 30 years old like me will remember the adverts on the telly and the yellow bags with the red logo, we all used to buy our Star Wars toys from there like huge AT-AT walkers) in St.Helens. Even when I was 8 I could appreciate that it was a beautiful little car. I destroyed it by accident when I was being a bit daft and playing with it on top of the coal bunker and it fell 4 feet onto solid concrete (the patio) and I was heartbroken :-(. I knew that I just had to get it back someday, and thank God for E-Bay I managed to find one very recently for 21 GBP from a seller in Bristol, England. The car is in absolutely perfect condition, no scra****s, you can't tell it's ever been used apart from a little copper oxide on the battery contacts that was soon taken care of. The box was in an only 'reasonable' condition but it also had ALL of the original packaging and leaflets and the Radio Control set was in nice condition as well. This is actually my joint favourite car with the PjMTW, I LOVE THE LOOKS OF THE mini-METRO. The radio control handset is very primitive but has 2 sticks and is robust. The controls are not proportional. When you put the battery (9v block) in, you can't appear to close the battery case on the back of the TX. The TX is really quite small, but suprisingly comfortable to use. It is 27MHz band, but it doesn't say what modulation or precise frequency...I tried firing a red & yellow & grey-brown X-TAL signal at it from a Futaba Attack-R and 4VWD but it doesn't respond... only to the supplied handset. The car itself has gorgeous shiny paint on it, very high quality application. The scale details are excellent, much better than I remembered them being. Also, when I was 8, this car seemed big, but when I see it now I realise that it is quite small. It is about 8 inches long. HOWEVER, your brain quickly adapts to this when you are actually using it and it 'feels' much bigger than it really is, especially when you lie down on a deep pile rug or something and drive the car at it's own 'level'. I don't know what it is about the body shape of this car but I get a warm glow inside me everytime I look at it, I love the looks of this car, and I was a BIG fan of the full size car when they first came out in 1980 and I still am a big fan of it. I was driven around in one a few times in one of my school friend's Dad's work car and I liked the inside of the car as well. I still need to apply the decals (supplied) in full to this model. Maybe I will oneday have several of these and I will paint them in different colours, in the colours that the original full-sized cars were supplied in. The model has an ABS HARD BODY!!! *YES*!! It actually has real rack-and-pinion steering in it, I know since it says so on the box and I also know because I took my original car apart when it got broken and I actually saw the rack and the tiny steering rack motor. The drive motor is quite small (250 size or whetever you might call it, not even RS380 sized, car takes 4 x 1.2V AA cells so one day when I have several of them I plan to put a bigger motor in it and add proportional throttle and steering. Boy can you ever tell it's old since the RX electronics take up the WHOLE of the inside of the car (you can see them through the windows in a bright light). Hope you all enjoy seeing the gorgeous looks of this very cute car! ****UPDATE: **** Got some Hama NiMH 2400 mAH cells and Delta Pro charger from 7dayshop.com (see my review of them on their web site) at the very good price of 18 GBP, to try in this car. On Alkalines it is sprightly, but on my old Uniross 650 mAH NiCd cells it is sluggish. I was interested to see if NiMH would make a difference. I was pleasantly suprised - Capacity and Voltage is excellent on the new Hama 2400 cells, way beyond my expectations. I got another 4 AA Hama cells of 2400mAH (a mere 7 GBP for 4 from 7dayshop.com) and I tried the 8 cells in my Futaba Attack-R R/C Transmitter. My usual Uniross 650mAH cells give about 1/2 an hour before the voltage is too low on the transmitter's battery meter to be useful. After over an hour with the Hama 2400 cells the voltage was still way up which was very pleasing. Then I put these now already used cells into this R/C mini-Metro model car. With Uniross 650mAH AA cells I get 15 minutes out of it and then it slows to a crawl, and for most of this time it is sluggish. Not so with the Hama 2400 mAH cells;- even though the cells had been in my transmitter for over an hour before I put 4 of them into the model car, the car gave a very sprightly performance, like it was a completely different model car! The cells just kept on going and I got tired after 15 minutes and the cells showed NO sign of any drop in voltage, the car was still sprightly, which was most pleasing! 8 x 2400 Hama cells are 220 grams versus 160 grams for my old Uniross 650 mAH NiCds, so watch out for this as it makes the Futaba Attack-R TX quite heavy feeling, but there is no comparison in performance, these new cells are incredible, especially in this car. Also got the 'mouse' shaped charger by GP from Budgetbatteries.co.uk which has 2 x 8.4 V NiMH '9V block' style batteries included, 170 mAH capacity, for 13 GBP, and these work perfectly in the Transmitter for this car and give run times of a few hours.
For the 1:1 car, see;- http://www.angelfire.com/retro/minimetroland/metrooriginal1980brochure/id3.html
This is maybe my joint favourite R/C model of all time, a lovely little car.
UPDATE: 8th April 2005, bought another one of these models. I am now trying to make it have proportional steering and throttle so I want to replace it's chassis if possible with a suitable RC chassis - though I will keep the original metro wheels on any new chassis that I get. Are there any R/C models out there with a 160mm wheelbase and 113mm track? Or just the 113mm track on any wheelbase will do, since I could stretch or shorten most other wheelbases as long as the track of 113mm is right... For information about the Supercar Rally derivative of this car, the 6R4, and a couple of great photos, see the book 'The Ultimate History of Fast Cars', pg. 192, 193, ISBN: 1405415916. For more diagrams and photos of the 6R4 see 'Metro (The Book of the Car)' by Mark Steward, ISBN 1855321807, this also has an incredible number of beautiful pictures of the whole Metro range. I also have the original 1980 Metro product launch colour brochure (Austin Morris publication #3466) and the small range overview brochure (Austin Morris publication #3477), and the Mk 1 Metro Vanden Plas colour brochure (Austin publication #3585) and the Mk 1 Metro Product Insight '83 book (112 pages) (Austin Rover publication, 2nd edition, February 1983) that is 'For use by Austin Rover sales men only', which shows you just about *everything* you could want to know about the Mk1 Metro, and I also have the Mk 2 Metro Product Insight book (96 pages) (Austin Rover Group publication, October 1984) that is 'For use by Austin Rover sales men only', which shows you just about *everything* you could want to know about the Mk2 Metro!