1/60 cars

Vincent Espinasse ex DTCA member is runing an interesting blog about diecast and tin plate models. autojauneblog.fr/ One of his last posts is about a project of making Hot Wheels like models at a scale near 1 / 65. 18 wooden mock-ups have been made and have been kept by a member of the Dinky design office. Vincent has just acquired these reliques and posted some pictures on his blog. Most models do not copy real cars. All these models are fitted with Speed Wheels on thin steel axles. Is there still more to discover about Dinky Toys ? Both pictures by courtesy of Vincent Espinasse of l'Auto Jaune Paris.

Hi Jacques, I understand that these are from Bobigny, not from Liverpool. Remarkable that such an independent development of designing an entire new range could take place there! Kind regards, Jan

The green car bears a resemblance to the Alfa Romeo Carabo Bertone concept car - maybe some of the other proposed models were also based on concept cars. - Kevin.

Hi Kevin, You are right, the green model is the Carabo. The only other two models in this range to be based on real cars are the Abarth 2000 and the Opel CD. 642 212 700 272All the other models are fancy designs by Meccano Ltd.Both pictures by courtesy of Vincent Espiansse.

Vincent also made the interesting comment that the wheels on most of these prototypes were taken from actual Mattel Hot Wheels models. Perhaps Meccano Ltd. would have created slightly more realistic wheels, or at least ones without the 'red stripe' tyres that were becoming rather dated by this time. Either way, it is interesting to speculate on what these models might have done for Dinky's fortunes, and whether they would have been made in France or sourced from Hong Kong (as we know Liverpool would have done!).

Johnny, I think that you are mistaken about the wheels. Vincent stated that the wheels are of the Hot-Wheels type. He should have writen Speed Wheels instead of Hot-Wheels.

No, I'm sure I'm not mistaken. The red stripe wheels on most of the prototypes were clearly taken from disassembled Hot Wheels toys and used for these mockups -- and why not? Meccano Ltd. did not have any of its own that could have been used. Naturally, if these prototypes had reached production, Meccano would have created its own tooling for the wheels, and, as you say, they would have been branded as Speed Wheels.