PB Alpha 83

The first time I was exposed to 1/8 scale on road racing was during a Perth Motorshow in Western Australia. I remember they whilst we had gone to the motor show on the pretext of seeing the new models of cars that year, the reality was that I had pushed my parents to go as I had heard that there would be on road gas radio control cars running at the show.

The short races themselves were broken up into short outings for the cars onto a makeshift track that was guided by wooden barriers if my memory serves me right. What a sight it was though seeing those machines screaming around the track, and the smell of the exhaust. At that time it was the all conquering PB Racing machines that I remember seeing at the track side the most, and of those it was all the red on those cars that stuck in my mind. I knew that one day I would have to track down one of my very own Alphas, and this was further reinforced over the years as I saw the PBs feature in Model Cars Magazine (from the UK) in each issue that I would buy.

The Car featured that I have is the version from 1983 (the Alpha first came out in 1981). This was if I understand correctly, the last incarnation of the Alpha before the Nova came out in 1984. What is interesting is the fact that PBs are really not that easy to track down. I had been looking for sometime (I seem to always be looking), when I stumbled upon a French website maintained by enthusiast a4roues, http://a4roues.jimdo.com. Via contact with him, I managed to find out that he had an example of the Alpha for sale that I subsequently managed to acquire from him. Since then I have not managed to see any other examples for sale unfortunately but the example I obtained was heavily restored hence I am very happy with the sole example in my collection.

Interesting in the example I have is the fact that the shell was painted on the outside compares with the fact that nowadays all our shells are painted on the inside of the shells. This example lead me to decide to collect a few other later PB models that I will post up soon.