Ola Guys

I seek your knowledge and wisdom.
I have searched a lot online but somehow I can't seem to find much. I'm looking for plastic scalemodels of the grand prix cars from the 30's. Cars like the Mercedes W25, W125, AutoUnion Type D (the famous Silberpfeile), Alfa Romeo P3 to name a few.

In my searches I found all sorts of Die cast models of these cars in all sorts of scales but prefferably I'm looking for 1:32 plastic models. Do they exist at all?

Would love to hear about it.

With friendly greetz

Robert Blokker

Hey Robert, only 30's that I know of aren't what your looking for. They are the old Linburg 1/32nd Plymouth coup, ford pick up and a few others in stryene. Some times they pop up at older hobby stores or e-bay. The date on the box from the last one I P/U was 1987, so they must be around if you can use them, even if not Grand Prix. If your able to scratch build them, I have some line drawings of Ferraris from then and would be able to scan them some time and e-mail to you.

Ola Bob

I was kinda fearing this answer after spending that much time trawling the web. Sadly the Plymouth and Ford are not what I'm looking for. I really am looking for the cars of the legends of the early Grand Prix' from Europe.
With what I'm looking for scratchbuilding would be a huge job as I don't have a vacu form machine (would love to own one of those). Because I want to have the vehicle completely opened up showing all that is inside. A kit that could be modified would be very handy in that case. But thanks for the offer on the drawings. Maybe in time I would like to give it a go.

It's kinda odd that no company ever made kits of these vehicles as they were very important for the future of car racing.

Oh well. Back to what I already have on the bench.

With friendly greetz

Robert

Hi Robert

The only 1/32 scale old-type racers that I know of are the Airfix and Matchbox range - Mercedes SS, Aston Martin Ulster and MGs come to mind -not GP cars. Matchbox did make an Auto-Union GP car which was pretty good.

Merit made a range of 1950s cars in 1/24 including Alfa-Romeo, Talbot, Vanwall, Cooper etc but these are very rare and quite expensive for very basic kits. Good base for superdetailing though.

While not a 1930's model, there was a company called Strombecker that produced 1/32 slot cars of some of the 1950's racers as well. Jaguar D type comes to mind. Maybe if you do a search for slot racers it will open up more leads.

David

@ Dave
Thanks for the lead. As of a few minutes ago I won one of the Matchbox kits on Ebay for quite a decent price. I found scans of the instruction sheets and it offers pretty much everything i was looking for to create a nice detailed GP Car. I'm pretty excited.

@ David
I found some examples of slotcar bodies in resin online and might purchase some of them in the future. Thanks for pointing that out.

A little update on this topic. As of last week I'm the lucky owner of the Matchbox AutoUnion Type D in 1:32


It is actually a very complete and nicely detailed kit for something of 1983. Full engine, neat interior. Crisp details. no flash. Now comes deciding what to do with it. Initially I was planning on giving it some extra detailing and showcase it on a nice base with the panneling left off. But a small diorama with the car finishing first in the last pre war grandprix in Belgrade with Tazio Novulari behind the wheel is also very tempting especially because there was a film crew that captured that moment very well

and then there are still the Airfix Bentley 4 litre and Alpha Romeo 8C available You can find those on e-bay regularly too