A new announcement was made by Minichamps today. 
After cancelling the minor teams of 2010, Lotus, Virgin, HRT, Minichamps decided to make the Sauber C29 of both Kobayashi and De la Rosa together with both the Williams FW32 of Barrichello and Hulkenberg.
All four models will be made in 1/43 only.

Dear visitors of Diecastnewsandchat.com,

did you know that in our forum we have several reviews on diecast with lots of photos taken of the specific model?
This might help you to convince yourself to buy a certain model!

For instance, take our latest addition to the review section. Today we added a photo review of the brilliant Spark Ligier JS 17 of 1981, driven by Jacques Laffite in the Austrian GP of 1981.

Want to see more? Visit our forum and sign up as a forum member!

Spark is known for their excellent quality models. They have been making many classic cars as well as the nowadays  DTM and Le Mans cars. But now they announced that they will be making the 2010 Lotus T127 in 1/43 and 1/18 scale!
At this moment a release date wasn’t given yet, but this will finally be the big test for Spark to see who is better… Minichamps or Spark. I can’t wait!

The long awaited Audi R8 LMS models by Spark in 1/18 are finally out! 
This car is a real racer, great looks, great sound, great performance! Spark has made four different versions so far. These are:

- Audi R8 LMS, No.97, 24 ADAC Nurburgring 2009 (black car)
Luhr – Abt – Hemroulle – Kaffer

- Audi R8 LMS, No.98, 24 ADAC Nurburgring 2009 (yellow/blue car)
Stuck – Biela – Pirro – Fassler

- Audi R8 LMS, No.99, 24 ADAC Nurburgring 2009 (silver/red car)
Rockenfeller – Stippler – Basseng – Fassler

- Audi R8 LMS, Test Car (plain silver car)

Retail price is pretty high though for a model which doors cannot be opened, which has no openeing bonnet or whatsoever.

Here are this week’s Minichamps releases week 22/2010:

1/6 Road Bike:

- KAWASAKI 900 Z1 ´SUPER 4´ – 1973 – GREEN/YELLOW

1/12 Road Bike:

- NORTON COMMANDO 750 FASTBACK – 1969 – SILVER

1/18 Road Car:

- OPEL REKORD P1 – 1958 – YELLOW/WHITE

1/43 F1 Car:

- MERCEDES GP – MICHAEL SCHUMACHER – SHOWCAR 2010

1/43 Race Car:

- BMW 700 SPORT – STUCK/GREGER – WINNERS 12H HOCKENHEIM – 1960 L.E. 504 pcs

1/43 Road Car:

- MERCEDES-BENZ CL-CLASS COUPE (C215) – 1999 – GREEN METALLIC L.E. 528 pcs
- FORD FK 3500 – TANKWAGEN – 1950 – ´ARAL´ L.E. 492 pcs

AUTOart is currently working on a classic Porsche race car, the 1:18 PORSCHE 908/2 GREEN PARK SEBRING 1970  SECOND POSITION #48 S.MCQUEEN / P.REVSON. Scale of the model will be 1/18, and looking at the first photos, it looks stunning!

Only questions that many collectors have is why the prices of AUTOart’s models have gone up the last two years. Surely with the financial crisis in the world, diecast producers have to make sure they still earn enough profit from their models. The most common used excuse is that costs of labour have gone up.

Anyway, this looks like a real great model and I’m sure it is worth the retail price of 160 US Dollars.

With the return of Michael Schumacher, Minichamps have already made three versions of the 2010 Mercedes GP  Showcar 1/43 and two versions of the 1/18 version. It is up to you to decide if this is a bad or a good situation.

The good news however is that Minichamps picked it where it left with the Michael Schumacher Collection. This collection came to an end when Hotwheels took over the Ferrari and Schumacher license. Now, with Schumacher racing for Mercedes, Minichamps can finally continue this amazing collection.

The 1/43 is out now, and this is #41 in the Michael Schumacher Collection.

a new brand in diecast world is True Scale Miniatures.  They started with the beautifull replica of the Porsche 935 K3  Le Mans cars from the early 80′s. When they announced they would be making the most ugly beautifull weird F1 car ever, the Tyrrell P34 6-wheeler, in 1/43 and 1/18 everybody knew it would turn out to be a success.

Now the first version of the P34 is out. It is the P34 #3 International Trophy Race at Silverstone Test Car in 1/18. we saw some first glimps of this model at the Nuremberg Toy fair. Then it was already clear that this was going to be a classic model. But in reality, it is even better!

This model is absolutely the best I’ve seen in the last couple of years. The ammount of detail exceeds the Exoto version of the P34. And it looks so smart!!! You even get a sort of name tag with it, so that you can put the model on display in a cabinet.

It is hard to describe how great this car looks, so if you want to see some more photos, please have a look in our forum. All in all I would say that with the retail price between 140 and 160 euro, this is an absolute bargain!

Norev bought the rights to produce the Audi A4 DTM car in 1/18 back in 2009. 
Since them a couple of versions have been made, like the championship winning car of Timo Scheider, the white livery of Kristensen and the beautiful Red Bull version of Ekstrom.

Now the version of Martin Tomczyk has been released! And as with the previous releases, it looks very good! And you know what? It doesn’t cost you much either! Retail price is around 40 euro and you get a lot of detail for that money.

If you are a fan of DTM, Audi or Tomczyk, make sure you get yourself one of these!

Minichamps seems to have lowered its number of pieces when talking about limited editions.
As with the upcoming Yamaha YZR-M1 Barcelona 2008 Bike, the bike will be limited to only 5.999 pieces. This still might look like a lot, but keep in mind that this is the lowest number ever for a race bike to be made of The Doctor!

So what does this mean for you? Try to pre-order it somewhere. Only then you can be sure that you’ll get your bike for retail price. Otherwise, be sure that the bikes will go for silly prices on Ebay. Try to avoid pre-ordering in the UK though, as most shops are already pre-sold out.

The bike is to be released in week 26!