[REVIEW] Tomica Colt Galant HT GS

Tomica time, Land of the Rising Sun-day, is here again. Today we examine the first installment in a series of unboxed Tomica models. This is Tomica 13-1, the (Mitsubishi) Colt Galant HT GS. This casting entered the range in March 1971, remaining until June 1975, and is representative of the early days of Tomica:

1971 is early for Tomica indeed, this casting is old enough to exist with the early style wheels which predate the “old wheels” seen here. Typical for early castings, glazing is only at front and rear. Although this is an early casting and maybe not as refined as later releases, it still has nice fine line casting detail, and touches such as the badges on the front fenders. Scale is claimed to be 1:59, likely accurate. The overall casting is good, but proportion looks a little long and low in my eyes, compared to the real world vehicle. Even as an early vehicle, this model features the crisp glazing, snappy (not as sharp as later models) door action, and springy suspension we all know and love from vintage Tomica. The color of this casting is period correct and suits it well, from all angles, it is a textbook example of a 70s “foreign car” and of the hardtop coupes that were a big fad from Japanese makes during this time:

Doors open to reveal a detailed interior and accurate steering wheel:

The front and rear have similar fine detail to the rest of the car, with the front and rear clip cast-in with the base, and the trunk badge and license plate being nice touches:

The base is metal, which adds heft, and has considerable technical and identifying detail. The 1974 copyright puts this later in the production run, and one can safely assume this was originally sold in an early run of Pocket Cars:

This is another one for my loose collection that I am happy to have in the hoard. This model was a natural choice for Pocket Cars, as the car was sold in NA as a Dodge Colt. While not rare, it seems to be mildly hard to find in box, likely via being in the early Pocket Cars line, so loose examples prevail:

And a couple 1:1s, first a Mitsubishi version from autocarbase.com, and a Dodge Colt variant from curbsideclassic.com: