It’s about time I posted another of my old Beetles. This is another I’ve had for around 25 years, I also have a cabriolet version but son-zilla crash tested it. It managed a 2 star Euro Ncap rating but now needs some repairs.
The scale marked on the base is 1:17 which seems to be an odd scale(to me, 1:18 is normal) It was made in France in the late 80’s which was around ten years after Majorette had taken over Solido, just in case you were unaware of that fact. I had know idea and although Solido has been in business since 1930 it has changed hands many times and is currently under the ownership of the Simba-Dickie Group.
There’s probably not much point in me typing out any facts on what is most likely the best known classic vehicle on the planet. I’m also tired from a crazy weekend, imagination is dead so I’ll spare you any other rubbish text as well (I heard that!)
I did find this out from Wiki and don’t recall hearing of it before. Mainly I included it for the 0-62mph time!!
“Diesel; In 1951, Volkswagen prototyped a 1.3 L diesel engine. Volkswagen made only two of these air-cooled boxer diesel engines (not turbocharged), and installed one engine in a Type 1 and another in a Type 2. The diesel Beetle was time tested on the Nürburgring and achieved 0–100 km/h (0–62 mph) in 60 seconds.[35]”
So it was probaly a good ten seconds quicker than the petrol version of the time(and maybe the next 20 years)
Anyway, here’s my Beetle. Now the year of the car is not marked on the model so looking for clues as to a production year I think it’s around 1957 to 1959. It has the larger rectangular rear window, which replaced the smaller oval rear window in 1957. One thing that troubles me with this is it should have a semaphore on the B pillar. It has the oval brake lights without the blinker lens and no front blinkers. Rear stop lights changed to the combination two lens variety (red stop/Amber blinker) around 59. This means there should be a semaphore but it’s not there.
I believe in the states the rear stop light can flash to serve as the blinker at that end. The front should have some form of blinker, these late 50’s bugs usually had a clear bullet style lens mounted just below and off to the side of each headlight. The more common teardrop shaped blinkers fitted on top of the front guards appeared around 1959, with the new style rear lights. So I think it’s modeled after the ‘57/’59 years, just minus the semaphores.
I had a bit of a look for similar models to mine and while I can find other models in different colors I didn’t see one in this color with the sunroof. It was just a quick search but I went through the entire page of image results and nothing. Don’t know if that makes it rare or it just happens that not many photos are published of it for some reason. I don’t think this is a valuable piece but as some would know I don’t look at my collection from that point of view. Photos start now.
Only the doors open on this model. The steering is functional but not the suspension.
You can make out some small defects on the headlight rims, thin extra plastic. I had not noticed before taking these photos.
The chrome is starting to get thin in a few areas but it’s a quarter of a century old now. Please forgive the ‘patina’ I’m just not up for cleaning it, I’d probably break it.
One thing I noticed is that the model is cast in two sections, upper and lower halves. This means the entire underside is die cast which is fairly well detailed but not perfect. Thanks for checking it out.