images via http://www.acontinuouslean.com/

There are cool bosses and there are cool bosses. And there are cool offices and there are cool offices. But when you get a cool boss that sanctions the build of a cool slot race setup to play with in the office, the cool boss doesn’t get much cooler and the office, of course, doesn’t get much cooler!

We saw these images of a Toronto office set up on cultish style blog ACL and thought we had to share. I don’t think it’s even Scalextric , in fact the closer you look the more kiddly and naïve the setup appears to be – but you gots to love in principle the attitude that facilitates little boy play diversions in one’s place of employ.

Forward these to your guv’nor in advance of the next pay review. Fun, not cash, that’s what we require!

all images via JNC

Mind driving may be the preserve of license-less 11 years old, but in the Influx household it remains firmly at the front of our adultescent imaginations.

So we were excited this morning when news hot of the retro Jap wires announces that Mattel are about to raise the stakes and do a series of editions of classic Japanese retro racers like these Skylines.

You can check the full list of 2011 editions here.

Father’s days is coming up isn’t it? Why not buy the boy of your dreams a piece of his childhood back?

We’re not sure if we’re posting this because it is a spectacular act of sublime automotive madness, because it is a brilliant bit of viral marketing, or whether the coverage is so good.

Either way, the Indy 500 weekend just past saw driver Tanner Foust (who apparently co-presents Top Gear America) complete a pretty spectacular world record distance jump in a custom built, jacked up monsterish truck.

It’s an inspired bit of action because we guarantee that if you’re reading this you will have at some point in your adult life spent an idle moment or two wondering what it would be like to do this.

The jump set a world record of 332 feet and air time was a full four seconds. There’s some interesting back-story here and some revelatory insight into the trim consequences of brake/throttle heel and toe action.

Two days, two million views. Which is more impressive — the feat or those viral figures?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Around Christmas time I can’t help but hanker after those simpler, more innocent times,. We reckon we got our passion for exotic vehicles from the untrammelled futurism of seventies children’s TV

And renderings of cool vehicles were never more colourful and imaginative as Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s creations.
Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds were only the most famous shows worked on by the dynamic puppet making duo. There was hyper geek Joe 90 who transformed in a disturbing mechanical bubble into a wunderkind and saved the world, and then, of course, there was Space 1999 and UFO, twin live action, slightly kinky sci-fi fantasies that all spun around the idea of doing heroic things in cool cars, spaceships, buggies and bikes.

Interesting to reflect that the idea of the Supercar was invented by the great Anderson team, too, as evidenced by the video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It starts early on. You probably got your first toy car as a present before your first birthday. By the age of three you were well versed in the arts and crafts of road and track and ramp construction and you had scored your first plastic trike.

Then, before you know it you are mind-driving in the back seat with your dad at the wheel, or you get one of those stick on steering– wheel-and-dash combos and you spend your time projecting yourself into that far-off adult world behind the wheel.

You start watching the Grand Prix, The TT and the Speedway on telly, and then learn how to ride a bike. The gradual process toward wheeled freedom begins. You stay out as late as you’re allowed and swoop and judder up and down through the imaginary gears, all the way to the park and back.

You take the racing line around lampposts, dog turds and bus shelters.

Before your family know it, you’re having driving lessons on a rainy Sunday in the supermarket car park. You and your mate sneak out onto the roads with your mum’s mini, handbrake turning and bumping around agog with the illicit fun of it all.

Once you pass your test you’re released from the workaday. You can go anywhere, anytime any place: as long as the car’s serviceable and there’s a full tank of petrol.

Those fleeting feelings are special. Hang on to them. Happy weekend.

Few enthusiasts of late sixties pop-culture wouldn’t get all het up by the Deora. Suitably psychedelic in its Mattel Hot Wheels rendering, the tricked out Kustom surf wagon was penned by legendary designer Harry Bentley Bradley, and first came to life as an adaptation of a real life concept truck commissioned by Dodge, based on the perennial favourite the A100 pickup.

There has of course always been a dialogue between the imaginings of car designers and those that find life in miniature. And the Deora is one of the most appealing of all model cars that (almost) achieved a lasting full-size life of its own.

The design was a crystallisation of the surf boom time crossed with a tripped out design aesthetic. GM probably correctly made the judgment that the time wasn’t quite right for an off-the-peg surf wagon. Surfers would have to wait until the Honda Element for that, the lifestyle wagon launched for the US market four decades later.

The obsession with model Kustoms in general is brilliantly illustrated by the lovingly detailed Redlines Online site.

Redlines is a really active forum for all interested in model Kustoms, and features interviews and profiles of leading designers, as well as collectors and other types of devotees of die-cast.

Watch this space for more focuses on great Kustoms toys that made it to the streets in various forms.