Vanquish MG Lola Kit

06/16/03

One of the most spectacular vehicles in the entire history of the CAN-AM series was the Lola T260 which made its debut in the 1971 series driven by three times world champion of Formula 1, the Scotsman, Jackie Stewart. Despite all the aerodynamic innovations made, this car did not meet with the success expected when confronted by the invincible McLaren, which dominated the CAN-AM championship. The Lola did not compete officially in the following seasons being passed down from one private enterprise to another.

Vanquish MG have now produced a kit of the Lola T260 driven by the American, John Gunn, during the 1974 CAN-AM season. The team obtained their highest place at the Elkhart Lake circuit finishing 3rd. The car had the classic Chevrolet motor producing more than 700 hp. The team was sponsored by Marchal America, a division

of S.E.V. Marchal of France, who are famous for producing some of the worlds most powerful car headlights, which were standard fitment on many of the classic high powered sports cars in the 60’s and early 70’s. You may be thinking that it seems a bit odd that Marchal, a company famous for its powerful headlights, sponsored a car in a race series that did not require headlights. However, lets be grateful that they did, as the striking Marchal logo of the

black cat with the old English gold coloured eyes on the front of this version of the Lola provides the kit with an instant appeal.

In fact, I have to say that Vanquish MG do appear to be providing some of the more interesting liveries in kit form, and I was very much looking forward to constructing the Lola T260 kit. Having honed my kit building skills on the Vic Elford McLaren kit, there was only one way to go now and that was up. My kit building confidence was sky high. However, as you will read later, it came back down to earth with a bump!

The box arrived in the post and the familiar eye catching box cover draws the eye. It contains an artist’s impression of the car on the front without a driver and interestingly there are some minor differences in the picture when compared with the contents of the kit. Once you have completed the kit you then compare it with the box cover and it is a bit like one of those “spot the difference” competitions. It all adds to the entertainment.

When you open the box the contents of the kit are included and packaged in separate sealed plastic bags, all placed in a tray with 3 compartments. The kit comes complete and all you need to provide is glue. I find that super glue works for me so I decided to continue with the tried and tested. You will all have your preferred glue and there is no reason not to continue to use that with this

kit. The kit components all come pre-coloured and tampo printed and painted. The drive assembly including the motor is already pre-assembled and so all you need to do is place this assembly within the base of the car at the appropriate point in the instruction manual. No fiddly wiring and guide brush fixing then. This permits somebody with even modest kit building skills who has never even constructed a slot car kit before to produce a finished car that looks as good and runs as well as any other in your “ready to run” slot car collection.

You are provided with a standard Vanquish MG base upon which to place your Lola when it is completed. It has the very clever mechanism, which enables you to lock the car onto the base without the need for a screw. The description on the base is in a font that is different to any others in my Vanquish MG collection and it appears that VMG have made a decision to provide different fonts for the base description rather than adopting a corporate standard font. This will add to the appeal as the collection grows over time.

The instructions are on 3 sides of A4 and are simple and use pictures without the use of words. They are small though and I find that they can be slightly confusing at times with a lot of detail in one small picture. Instruction P4 in particular is very difficult to follow and so I would recommend that you all read this review and look at the pictures if you want to produce the perfect kit. I made mistakes and you will too! So listen carefully!

The instructions suggest you start with the body components. I would recommend that you leave this until last as you will be familiar with how much or little of your glue is required to stick things together and you won’t mess up the body by spreading glue everywhere and over gluing. I started with the rear assembly. Now eagle-eyed readers will

have spotted that I glued the red rear warning lights on my McLaren kit into the rear exhaust pipe. I have had several e-mails pointing this out for which I thank you. I think it makes the rear exhaust on my Mclaren look red hot. However, hands up, its is a mistake and not one I have made with the rear end on the Lola. The two little red rear warning lights are in their correct position, which is in the two holes at the top of the rear framework, and not in the tail of the

exhaust pipe. There is a WARNING to be made about this rear assembly. Make sure that the middle section with the oil cooler on top is firmly pushed right back into the rear sub assembly. If it is not then the body will not fit properly when the time comes to place it on the chassis. The horizontal oil cooler fits into a rectangular opening in the body, and so if it is not correctly positioned then you will have a problem. And if you look very closely at the pictures some of you will spot a mistake. Yes, the exhaust support is sitting more forward than on other Lolas that you may have in your collection. The joint connectors on this piece should be pushed right back into the holes but I failed to do this and the rear exhaust support is now about 4 mm proud of the rear of the body. I think the “new” appearance looks better than the original but I now expect e-mails from purists who say I have spoiled the perfect lines of the rear of the car. To those purists I say sorry.

And so onto the engine assembly. I opened the package and looked at the components, and looked again, and blinked, and looked again. Where was the engine block? Had Vanquish MG forgotten to put in a critical part? The McLaren had an engine block, so where was it for the Lola? (Readers note - if Vanquish MG had forgotten to include the engine block then the review would end here). I looked at all the unopened packs. No engine block. After two minutes of looking on the floor to see if it had dropped off the

table I then realised that the engine block on the Lola was part of the aluminium tray, unlike the McLaren. I had to smile at this point as it was an obvious point that I had overlooked, but I suspect that those of you who have constructed the McLaren kit first may well ask the same question and go through the same search exercise that I did. Unless of course you have read this review!

Any way, all the engine parts were a nice fit and I managed to place the cam covers with the word “Chevrolet” printed on the right way

around this time. The rear suspension springs, which are real wire springs painted green, slide onto the damper assemblies which then fit into the holes in the torsion bar. Fit the suspension assembly to the torsion bar before you fit the torsion bar to the engine block/aluminium tray. I didn’t and I was then in a nightmare scenario to fit them as the torsion bar kept bending and I did not want to break it. The damper assembly should angle out slightly and not sit vertically. The pictures will guide you here.

Now to the driver compartment and driver. John Gunn appeared to have a better fit than Vic Elford does when all the parts when tested for fit. Having learned from my mistake with Vic Elfords seat belt I decided to fit this first before John Gunn had his arms fitted. I decided to remove the red stub on the belt as this permitted the belt to rest better on John Gunn’s body. Before doing any of this however, I had decided to undertake a fix-it tip from Slot Car Illustrated which would help to lower the driving position of John Gunn, and make him appear to be sitting in the car, rather than on a cushion.

So I gave John Gunn a reverse lobotomy and slimmed him down as in the photograph. I used a combination of lead snips and a modelling knife but the method of cutting offered by Ken McClellan in his tip provides for a neater final appearance.

I then fitted the seat and the driver and placed the rear of the driver’s seat belt through the slots in the rear

of the seat. I then realised that I should have fitted the gear stick first as the gear stick has a rod that sits under the seat. The gear stick can still be fitted with the seat in place by pushing the rod through the hole in the seat, but with difficulty. As I have said earlier, the instruction sheet does not give you any sequence for fixing, and this is one area where there is room for improvement, even if the parts are just numbered. For the moment they are not and so you can all produce the perfect kit simply by reading this review.

The two cooler radiators were next. There are two sets of slots in the aluminium tray. One forward slot permits the radiator to sit at an angle and the other rearward slot permits the radiator to sit vertically. Again the instructions do not clearly which slot to use as the parts are shown vertically on the instruction sheet, but are shown at an angle later on the instruction sketch showing the aluminium tray being located to the chassis. More by luck than judgment I choose the slot that

located the cooler radiators at an angle. This is the correct slot and the body sits tightly on the radiators so it is very important that they are placed at the right angle.

The instrument panel is another area where you have to be careful. The instruments are fitted from behind. Do not fit the steering wheel until the instruments are fitted. When you fit the steering wheel only fit the steering wheel stub as far back as the rear edge of the dashboard assembly. If you fit it all the way back so that the steering wheel is
tight against the dashboard, then John Gunn will not be holding the wheel, but will have his arms in a position that would suggest he is doing a yoga exercise and not driving a car. See the picture for more help.

And now, not last and not least, the tray upon which the battery and fire extinguisher is fitted. This for me was a total disaster. I fitted the battery and the extinguisher and then glued the whole assembly in place. When I attempted to fit the car body to the aluminium tray it would not fit. I spent 5 minutes trying to work out if cables were in the way, to discover that I had not fitted the tray properly. If you look at the photograph of the aluminium sub tray, you will see

that the panel at the front upon which the fire extinguisher and battery sit is proud. The photograph looks fantastic by the way. Sadly this photograph is now all I have of this car in that condition as I subsequently had to chop the fire extinguisher and battery off, and cut down the rear of the panel where it sits tall above the instrument panel/dashboard. This was the only way I could get the car body to sit properly.

It was my mistake. The tray can sit much lower than I had positioned it, so when you assemble your kit please remember to position this tray properly as I would not want you to go through this same experience that I went through. Fortunately it’s all hidden and nobody can tell once the body is on which is good. It’s only when you remove the body that you can see the damage the car has suffered.

The body assembly was the last part I glued together and

this was all straight forward. Remember not to glue the roll bar supports to the roll bar and you only need to apply glue to the tabs on the windscreen. If you apply more you risk glue smear. The white body of the Lola is better at hiding excess glue than the dark blue body of the McLaren, and the final finish achieved with the Lola is perfection.

All that is now left to do is to screw the body to the aluminium tray and your car is finished. I did not on this occasion grease up the differential and glue the casing together. I looked at the casing and there are signs that the differential has already been heavily greased by Vanquish MG, and I have recently learned that vanquish MG have recommended that the unit is not separated as a result of the

matching process that each differential assembly has. Anyway, the car was assembled with the 6 screws provided.

And what a car!

It has a different look to the others in the Vanquish MG Lola range as a result of being predominantly white. The detail has a stronger presence as a result and the oil coolers and recesses are more obvious. The cat on the front is eye catching. I have compared the tampo work and finish with the first Lola I purchased and the “Union” and
“Champion” sponsorship printing does certainly appear to be cleaner and crisper than before.

	The Lola kit has an identical chassis to earlier ready to run models and a few laps of my Scalextric SPORT circuit confirmed that the handling was identical to the rest of my Lola collection. Reviews elsewhere of the ready to run Vanquish MG Lola provide more information about the running characteristics.
As this is more a review of the Lola kit and its construction then I will not say anymore for now about the running characteristics.

The Vanquish MG Lola T260 kit is a superb addition to the small but expanding range of kit cars currently available. It contains parts that have a good fit and a nice finish. After about 2 to 3 hours of kit building you will have a nice model that permits you to talk about your wonderful kit building skills with others. An enthusiast with little kit building experience will produce a model that an expert kit builder would be hard-pressed to better. The kit is now available across Europe and should be at your stockist in the USA

very soon. This kit will be as popular as the McLaren kit introduced in April and should help to consolidate the position of Vanquish MG as one of the fastest growing recently established slot car companies.

Thank you to Collette at Monarch Lines, the distributors of the Vanquish MG range in the UK, for providing this kit for review.

GARETH LEIGH

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