1/43 Mini Cooper S Clubman from Rastar




This is a typical cheap die cast + plastic toy car widely available in many local toy shop or departmental store here and there.

Produced by Chinese manufacturer "Xing Hui Auto Model Co. Ltd." with the not so Chinese brand called "Rastar", this item sold at reasonable cheap price and should captured all expectation at the given price tag, nothing extra, nothing less.

The first model I choose from this "Rastar" is this "1/43 scale Mini Cooper S Clubman" with red color and black top a combination of "Hot and Bold". Lately I'm so infatuated with this car and its variation that this model will appear in Shewsbury Land.


The box/packaging;




The price as you can see there on the box is SGD 7.90 (about USD 6.20) and sometimes if you happen to buy during sales or promotion period, you will get 15% discount.

Out of the box/pacakaging;





You can see the name of the proud Chinese toy producer - "Xing Hui Auto Model Co. Ltd." and as stated in the picture below, this item is officially licensed, that means they have "blessings" from BMW AG..... now that is cool.







And so now we will have a close look at this 1/43 scale car (about 4 inches / 10cm);











My first impression, from out of the box to the finishing of the car itself.... it's kind of good for such a cheap price (remember SGD 7.90 / USD 6.20). With such retail price, I guess the production cost for each car is maybe around merely SGD 2.00 to SGD 3.00 (USD 1.57 to USD 2.37)







This Mini Cooper S Clubman seems to be a little bigger than the typical Mini Cooper S.







One thing that I don't fancy so much is the fact that all "Rastar" cars produced with left hand steering (American style) but then again, since this is a Western or rather European car, I don't mind about it so much, if it's an originally Japanese car, then I usually insist for those right hand steering or else I wont bother to buy it.

Eventually, I have some sort of idea to do a little tiny modification of the steering wheel of this car, a stupid simple project I used to called as "2 dollar project". I will upload the outcome of this "2 dollar project" on this particular Mini Cooper S Clubman later.







Let's have a look at the interior of this car but before we do that this is how it looks like for the under side of the car, using the typical Philips screw driver, we can easily detached the body from the chasis;







And my discovery surely made me laugh a lot...... LOL.... I'm quite surprise but then again I think it's quite funny as well... I found out that the manufacturer put 2 metal balls to make the car feels heavier than it should be.... LOL... that is classic... exactly what we could expect from Chinese manufacturer. Good trick though, nothing so wrong about it... but... oh well....






2 metal balls;





Yeah, seriously 2 metal balls;





The body of the car are made of die cast metal but the chasis and the rest of the other parts are typical cheap plastic so in a way this toy car is quite light. So by adding the 2 magic silver metal balls inside it (wow a couple of them) this toy car feels a little bit "heavy" - 2 balls, that is a sudden idea the designer can think off while looking at his penis as he is running out of idea on how to make the car feel a little "heavier". Rastar brand certainly got balls.... LOL



And this is how the interior look like;












Not much to highlight, this is a cheap toy, so we can't expect for great details right? In my opinion, they did well on the interior part. Not too ambitious and not to lousy either.







Overall, as we have said many times above, this is a cheap (not 100%) die cast toy car of Mini Cooper S Clubman. With such low price, one should be content with what they can get from this model. For some serious collectors with thick wallet, I guess this is certainly not for them but for those casual collectors or those always low on the budget collectors and in fact for the mass market of parents who just wanted to buy a cheap toy car for their kids, this is good enough.








end

Comments

  1. too bad the doors cannot be open. if not it will be prefect.

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