Model Lotus

It hasn’t always been as good as this, model cars I mean. We take for granted the myriads of different marques and scales that pour out of Chinese factories in fantastic detail and almost every scale of our favourite cars. Such is the technological changes in both design and manufacture; we sometimes forget that all of this has happened within most of our memories. We take for granted that Spark, Minichamps, Tecnomodel and other resin-cast manufacturers will churn out perfectly accurate replicas for burgeoning collections. Tamiya, Tameo, MFH and others will do the same for highly detailed construction kits of similar subjects, yet, back in the last century when many of us were small enthusiastic boys wanting model cars, all we got were the early die-cast stuff that came out of Dinky in the UK, as well as Norev and Solido in Europe following the end of the second world war when motor racing began its recovery. Other than the early Dinky racers, there was very little. It wasn’t until the early seventies that John Day models first began to appear in white metal and then Acorn models with vac-form bodies. The cottage industry then exploded through the later seventies and eighties with both white metal and resin-makers springing up.