107 replies to this topic

[Barry Boor]

Good point, Geoff, but there is a photo of Chiron, at Reims I think, that looks original and the car is blue in that, too.

[RCH]

Barry, I've had a look on the website of most major Spark dealers but can't find any reference to the Osca you refer to?

 

However, this model appears frequently, but its not from Spark.

 

 

According to the background, it was built by Villa Model based on a TW Collection kit.

 

 

 

Villa, glad to hear he is still going. He turned up at one of the fairs we did back in the '90's. Lovely man but somewhat overenthusiastic about his models, which were normally based on built kits. They were quite well presented and we sold a few. We nicknamed him Pancho (sorry!),

Talking of mistaken colours 1920's Le Mans Bentley models always appeared in dark BRG. Then Starter produced models in a rather vivid olive green, they claimed this was correct according to the man who actually painted them. The truth was Parsons Napier Green which was a little muted from the Starter colour. Then Spark, or was it Ixo, came back with the "traditional" dark BRG. I pointed out to them that this was wrong. The answer was "we know but Bentley Motors insisted we use this colour".

[D-Type]

Another on!.  Yesterday at Kempton Park Toy Fair for the princely sum of £10 I acquired a Rio model of a red Itala with "Itala" on the radiator.  The accompanying leaflet said it was the winner of the 1906 Targa Florio.  I now find that the actual car was grey with no. 3 on the radiator and the sides.  AAARGH!   Well, it was only a tenner so I can't complain too hard.

In fairness to RIO, this is their model No 1, so presumably one of the first they produced.  They have subsequently produced versions of both the first and second placed cars with the correct grey colours and numbers.  I'll have to look out for one and be prepared to pay a bit more.

Edited by D-Type, 15 May 2023 - 17:09.

[dmj]

I believe RIO actually modelled this car: https://asimarket.it...p-targa-florio/

 

They mostly produced quite accurate models of real cars from Italian museums and kept them in their catalogue for decades.

Only fairly recently they made additional historic research and produced some cars like those grey TF Italas, based on the period photos.

It is quite possible that back in 1961 red Itala was actually on display somewhere, branded as TF winning car.

[D-Type]

That makes a lot of sense.  This is clearly an early model (Witness the Model No. 1).  The description that accompanied it can be read as meaning that similar cars won the Targa Florio and the Peking-Paris rather than the full sized car that this particular model is based on.

[Jager]

I appears Rio were not the only ones who got the colour of the 1906 Italia wrong:

 

 

Na sta Sicilia: Targa Florio | La storica corsa automobilistica attraverso l'arte

[pete53]

Here are three models from my collection that are less than satisfactory.

 

1. Jaguar E by Tekno (of Denmark) - the body shape is not too bad but the hardtop sits much too high and spoils the whole effect. I seem to recall the Best model of the E-type had a similar failing.

2. Chaparral 2F Marklin ( Germany)- the windscreen is completely the wrong shape and has tiddly wheels.

3. Ferrari 156 - a true shocker from the otherwise usually reliable Solido ( France) stable.

 

I suppose I can partly forgive the manufacturers as these were toys and majority of the children buying them, particularly the Chaparral and Ferrari, would not have been that familiar with the real thing. However, these makers were all capable of turning out good quality die-casts, so I do wonder what happened when they were making up the dies for these models.

 

Edited by pete53, 21 June 2023 - 17:35.

[dmj]

Well… it was quite hard back then (and it is still sometimes) to capture all the details of a model. Besides it, with racing cars it is unlikely that most of the modelcar makers had access to the real things, so they mostly produced it from the photos and if lucky, factory drawings, with somewhat unpredictable results. In line-ups of each classic modelcar brand there were hits and misses, so to say.

IMHO, the old models compared to new, computer-generated models are what the paintings are compared to photos. Representations of the spirit of a particular car, rather than faithful reproductions. That’s actually why I prefer them, at least if I consider that a master model maker managed to capture the spirit. Sometimes very wrong, cartoonish models of a car are the best for me, if that particular quality has been achieved.

Also, as mentioned, these old models were basically toys and thus should be seen quite differently than ones made strictly for collecting. But please note that even today, with all the technology and available data, it is sometimes quite hard to capture the lines of a model. Market is full of the wrongly proportioned modelcars.

I worked with De Agostini on a series of 1/43 models for the market of former Yugoslavia. Mainly reissues of existing molds but we developed some models from the scratch. Some were easy for modelling (mostly, as you’d expect today, done in China, from the computer graphic designers that never saw any example of the real cars they modelled), some needed extensive changes but a few were for some reason (couldn’t really find the pattern) so complicated that we never managed to finish and release them.