Diecast Delights: David Deacon's BMW M1 In 1:43 Scale

Despite what television and the internet might have you believe, some guys actually enjoy spending time with their wives. This weekend we hitched up the wagons and headed into town for a day out and about enjoying the gorgeous weather and seeing what Reno had in store. We grabbed some lunch and walked around in the more gentrified bits of town, where we found a couple antique stores. She loves antiquing, and I don’t mind it. I spent my time among the vintage stuff seeking out car things, and more often than not, some of them come home with me. This one was shouting to me that it would like to come home and join the other 1:43 on my shelf. I have a weird thing where I don’t generally purchase scale models of street cars. I tell myself that keeping models of street cars only dampens my dream of eventually owning that car in 1:1 scale. As such, I restrict myself to collecting only racing cars. Similarly simplistic, I just don’t have space for 1:18 scale so I’m further limited to smaller scales with less fervent detail.As such, this piece fits perfectly in my collection parameters. This time I was persuaded to part with eight hard-earned American greenbacks in exchange for this little beauty. It’s hardly the most beautiful or detailed piece in my collection, but for the price I couldn’t pass it up. Besides, that livery is gorgeous, and the car is in near-mint condition. My shelves don’t have nearly enough BMW M1 anyway. This is a Burago piece built in the mid-1980s. The top is diecast, the bottom is moulded plastic, as are the rear decklid louvers and the interior. It’s a bit light in the hand to call “quality”, and the livery is a craftily-applied decal, which hides some details of the car underneath, but from a few feet, it’s a good piece. The car upon which this model is based, is the BMW M1 of David Deacon, as raced in the 1981 season. Deacon also raced this same car in 1982, but had removed the high-mount rear wing and replaced it with an extensive rear spoiler. The Cam2 oils sponsorship cuts a sharp contrast against the black painted background. This is the car with the aforementioned large spoiler, shown racing at Mid Ohio in 1982. Photo sourced from Terry Capps’ Flickr account. The album from that race is excellent, and worth killing some time investigating further. Here is a photo of the car at Daytona for the 24 hour race in 1981. As the watermark indicates, this photo is from RacingSportsCars.com, where I found this extensive overview of Deacon’s career.