Miniature Car Garage Update

[TerryB]

Junkyardjeff is quite an artist with his miniature car and truck projects he posts here.  I am no where near his talents but I do enjoy refurbishing them to a little better than when I get them.  These two are from a large group I purchased from a relative of my wife who decided he no longer wanted them.  The story is my wife’s never married aunt bought these toys at fine department stores in the 1950s and 1960s for her nephews and gave them out at birthdays and Christmas.  She bought mostly Corgi Dinky and Solido toys that were often not replicas of cars common to the USA.  Here are two from the group, a 1967 Solido Chaparral 2F and a 1958 Dinky (France) Vespa 400 2CV car that was a France market build.  The Vespa was competition for the Citroen 2CV.  As a kid in the 1950s-60s neither of these two cars would have ever been on my radar to have.

 

The blue Vespa needed a good cleaning and tires.  A trip to the local hardware store’s o-ring supply got me 4 tires for $1.29.  The white Chaparral also needed cleaning and the rear wing reattached, it had been broken off.  A little superglue and E6000 glue took care of that.  Cleaning is a combination of kit brand Scratch Out, a gentle form of rubbing compound followed up with a light rub with Behold spray furniture polish.

 

 

[keiser31]

Nice examples!

[TerryB]

Some recent work in getting these miniatures cleaned up.  I’ve ordered correct tires for the Rambler wagon from eBay. It had a broken windshield, fixed with some super glue.  The Corgi shovel had the mount for the bucket broken on one side, fixed with E6000 glue. Same for the road roller, had the roof broken off and the posts to the body all bent up. E6000 to the rescue.  Fun stuff to keep a guy stuck in a wheelchair busy in the winter.  
 

[TerryB]

Another clean up, I’m not painting as eBay shows original paint is more desirable.  This one is a 1965 or so VW Karmann Ghia 1500 by Corgi.  The actual car was never sold in the US.  It is missing the suitcase luggage that was in the front trunk but does have the spare tire that was removable.  It doesn’t look quite as bad from a distance, the camera seems to highlight the paint damage.  I guess it qualifies as a 20 footer.

 

[TerryB]

Another “cleanup”,this Dinky toys 1960 Rambler Cross Country had a black stripe hand painted on the right side of the car from front grill to rear bumper.  I wanted to experiment with using my Scratch Out polishing compound on the stripe since the paint was so rough I had nothing to loose.  A lot of elbow grease got rid of the stripe ever so slowly.  The yellow spots on the roof are where the rubbing compound cut through the white paint.  This car is Dinky #193 and is unique in that the front wheels turn left to right.  First one I’ve seen with that feature.  The roof rack is missing and the paint makes it look a bit rough but it’s still cool in my book.

 

Edited February 13, 2020 by TerryB (see edit history)

[TerryB]

Here is a Dinky toys 1957 DeSoto Fireflite Police car that got some cleaning and 4 new repro tires. Dinky toys were made in England and still have a strong following.  The red light on the roof was missing, and since I did not want to spend $10 for a repro for a car in this condition, I took a 3mm round LED and sanded it down until it somewhat looked correct.  I figure it’s better than having a hole in the roof!

 

Edited February 16, 2020 by TerryB (see edit history)

[3macboys]

29 minutes ago, TerryB said:

for a car in this condition

I can guarantee that there is no full size police car that would look that good after 63 years

[John S.]

Terry, you have a cool collection of Dinky cars. Like the Desoto  police car.

[keiser31]

Couple of well loved examples I picked up a while back....

[TerryB]

1 hour ago, John S. said:

Terry, you have a cool collection of Dinky cars. Like the Desoto  police car.

Thank you!  My wife has two more cousins that might be a source of more cars like this  but we don’t see them too often.  It has been a lot of fun trying to improve them without wrecking the all important patina they have accumulated over the years.

[TerryB]

The British Dinky toys had competition from the Corgi line, another British company who challenged Dinky with features like plastic windows and a simulated suspension for the wheels.  Here’s my most recent work to clean up and make this Corgi race car set look presentable after 50 years of storage.  Note the original box too.  On line info says this set was made 1961-1963.  The red #25 car is a Vanwall, the turquoise #1 is a BRM Formula 1 and the red #36 is a Ferrari Formula 1.

 

Edited February 24, 2020 by TerryB (see edit history)

[junkyardjeff]

I have a few Dinky and Corgis and here are some,I need to find the rest of them

[junkyardjeff]

I wish I could remember where the rest are.

[junkyardjeff]

I spent many hours playing with those when I was much younger.

[TerryB]

The dual trailer is Matchbox king size.  My current group has many of the same cars!

[TerryB]

Some recent clean ups.  Dinky toys 1958 Lincoln in green, a Corgi 1956-58 Heinkel three wheel and a 1950s Dinky toys Studebaker Mobiloil tanker truck.  The Lincoln seems to have seen the roughest playtime.  Heinkel was made by a motorcycle company of the same name.  It was initially powered by a 175cc single four stroke and then upgraded to 198cc.  

 

 

[Jim Bollman]

Here are some of my very miniature garage.

 

[TerryB]

Jim, that is a cool idea on how to display them!

[keiser31]

I LOVE those trays for display. I have a couple of them....

[Mark Wetherbee]

While I only have plans to wash this up some, I found this Pierce-Arrow toy made by the Sharron Toy Company at the Tidewater Region AACA flea market a couple weeks ago that I found out had a pretty interesting history. This was copied from grandoldtoys.com:

 

“Very little is known about the Sharron company; a Depression-era firm which produced cast iron-looking vehicles for less than 5 years. Apparently the few known Sharron vehicles were manufactured as part of a work-study program sponsored by the Eastern Mennonite College in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Production was extremely limited until it ceased altogether, but not before local chain stores had placed a handful of orders.”

 

 I looked on eBay to see what might have been out there but all I could find was another version from them for a much higher price than this one was. Be interesting to hear about others around if anyone has one...

[TerryB]

Excellent find Mark!  Never heard of the company.  Some sizes of those white rubber tires show up for sale on eBay.  I bought some of the Dinky toy white tires there.  The old white tires seem to crumble with age but the black tires seem to hold up better.  I found black o-rings at the local hardware store that work perfectly for some sizes of Dinky smooth tires.  Locally for me the Hubley toy company was the main manufacturer of metal toys.  They show up quite often at flea markets and antique malls.

[Mark Wetherbee]

What I plan on doing is making a wood block to hold the original tires just off the surface so they don’t deteriorate any more. One of the reasons I bought a cast aluminum toy was that the tires made it more period authentic, usually the aluminum ones I’ve seen were later versions of iron toys to the point of their being considered reproduction. I have the feeling that new tires would also make people think of it as a reproduction and not a pre-war item. I’m glad I took a chance on it, but I was looking for anything Pierce-Arrow to go with my “new” car and this fit the bill.