While cleaning out some clutter from my house, I found a ziploc bag with some strange little toys from my childhood. They were these tiny wooden houses and animals and trees and bridge bits, simple little wooden bits you’d put together to make little villages. I think one of my dad’s business colleagues brought them back from Switzerland? They feel pretty damn Swiss.
This was our Minecraft, kids! Tiny chunks of wood, perfect for making little picturesque and bucolic cult compounds, sort of like whatever the hell was going on in Midsommar. But that’s about it.
There are a few cars in this set – maybe there were more but things this tiny get lost over time, and I think this set has to be well over 40 years old, so I just have a few left. Let’s see if we can identify what cars they may have been based on!
This one could be a few things, depending on the scale we see it as. It could be something like an Opel Kadett, a 1938-ish one, with that vertical grille and bustle-butt:
That roof is a bit flatter, though, so it could be something else? I’m willing to listen to other suggestions, of course.
What about this one? I think it’s trickier:
This one is really odd; the proportions are interesting. The hood is relatively short, the roof has a sort of peak about halfway through, and it may have a sort of fastback, but there’s a break in there, so it may be more of a notchback of some kind. It’s odd!
Is that a convertible top, maybe? What the hell could this be? It sorta reminds me, proportionally, of a Morris 1800:
The slope of that trunk feels right, but the roofline doesn’t work, exactly. Once again, I’m open for suggestions!
Okay one last one:
Ha! I got you! That’s a pig, which is not technically a car. If you caught that, pat yourself on the back, car expert.
Could the second ba a Porsche Type 597 Jagdwagen?
I think you nailed it.
My kids had set of these in the 90s, but I think it was a Chinese knock off, and I don’t recall what the cars looked like
A young Japanese engineer was playing with the second one. He grew up to design the Nissan CrossCabriolet.
Sorry, I meant the third one.