I grew up in West Africa in fairly remote parts, so no TV or normal things for entertainment..... but there was a shop in a nearby town that sold Dinky and Corgi toys, I was already into motor racing.... something to do with Dad getting Motorsport Magazine delivered via Banana Boat from the UK every month (he was an engineer with Fyffes Bananas!) So I had all the Dinky and Corgi racing cars.... they were all I ever wanted as presents. I certainly remember the Talbot Lago, an Alfa Romeo and Maserati plus the one I used to enjoy most I cant remember quite what it was but it was a light green colour. It wasn't one of the main makes but what it was escapes me.
Our house was built on stilts and the ground level was a big slab of concrete where the Land Rover lived along with tables and chairs for socialising. It made a great surface for diecast cars.
Then c1959 I got a small Scalextric set for Christmas. It had just been released and again came by Banana Boat from the UK. That I soon realised was as much for Dad to use than me! Anyway we used to play it for hours and over the years it was added to, track and cars, at every Birthday and Xmas. Cars I remember were a Vanwall, BRM P25, Lotus 21 (blue!), Cooper (Red), Jaguar D Type and Lister Jag. The electrical connections were dreadful and often the metal contacts would break and the car in that lane would stop.
I remember being very upset when at 8yo I was despatched to boarding school in the UK and not allowed to take it.
Dad was transferred back to London in the late sixties, and the house we lived in soon had the loft boarded up and quite a large Scalextric set was assembled. The track had evolved from the original, had became plexitrac then or similar, and had to use special adaptors to join old and new types of track.
I joined a local slot car club in Hampton Court with some school friends (I had become a dayboy) and we started making scratch built cars from brass plate and piano wire. I got quite handy with the soldering iron. We used transverse motors with re-wound armatures (I think the term was 'side-winders' but we had 'angle-winders' as well, which were 45degrees mounted) and the track was 6 lane, made from plywood board and with copper tape. Just plug in your controller and away you go. The car bodies we bought as clear plastic flimsy things which we would paint on the inside and mount to the chassis with pins. Every Friday night Dad's Taxi would drop me off there and pick me up later. My first home build was a Chaparral and that made may for a McLaren M8B.
Which led me to my first motor sport competition. Said school friends and I decided to enter as a team at a 24hour race in Southend. Wonderland Raceway IIRC. Before I was old enough to drive so our Mums and Dads took us. Quite an eye opener as we found ourselves up against teams of adults, some from Holland I remember. All with huge boxes of equipment We finished, albeit last but one, a few thousand laps off the pace. I got my first ever motor racing trophy! I think it was an encouragement award!
Funnily enough I couldn't get die cast cars out of my head.... when I started working my first 'proper' job was with Mettoy (Corgi Toys). One of my first projects was to evaluate the then new market for radio control toys. I would spend my day in the car park 'evaluating' different remote control cars!
I then went on to work for Dinky Toys as Product Development Manager, before moving to Airfix, (who by then had bought Dinky)..... and then Airfix went bust. Then after I moved to Australia I ended up working for Mattel looking after their boy's toys for a few years!
I had over the years through work collected quite a lot of die-cast samples which I still have in a box somewhere.
It was quite sad when Airfix went down.... All sorts of stuff went into the skip. I managed to save the original Dinky Toy engineers drawings plus a few samples in development. Several years later they ended up being flogged off at auction in the UK where I had left most of it with Mum and Dad. Paid for a large part of my divorce settlement.
I still have a few little gems.... a pre-production Dinky Granada Ghia which never went into production. Unpainted and complete with the interior and wheels, albeit all unassembled. I also have an MRRC slot car set, still in its box unopened which includes an M23 and a 312T, plus 'several' cars boxed and unused, all from the 70's.
Anyway this has meandered away from the die-cast loungeroom GP memories.