As kids, model trains are likely something that interested a lot of us, for some that never went away. Growing up in Germany, model trains were (and still are) sort of a way of life with some of the highest quality and detailed items available anywhere. That extends to the ancillaries as well, being a car freak from the beginning I quickly became more interested in the cars, vans, and trucks that were available than the train sets I had.
As a result I built a bit of collection during the early to mid 1980s when I’d go back to visit and spend whatever pocket change I had on them. HO scale was my main focus of interest which is 1:87 and quite a bit smaller than for example a Hot Wheels car. The average HO scale passenger car such as the BMW above measures about 2″ long (the short dimension of a standard business card).
Audi 100 (C1) by Wiking
My collection mainly consists of the two biggest brands, those being Herpa and Wiking with a few from Rietze, Praline, Roco and Brekina thrown in as well (but the vast majority are Herpa and Wiking). Any hobby shop and many department stores across Europe carry these, back then they were all made in Germany from plastic with metal axles, and in fact I believe the majority are still made there today. Virtually any European car model was easily obtainable, often developed in lockstep with the manufacturer introductions, and often available in various colors; I have duplicates and even triplicates of a few in various colors.
The detailing and quality was and is superb; and as you’ll see, almost every model should be fairly easily identifiable. Costs at the time varied, one of the Porsches (the one pictured below in fact) still had the price tag on the bottom with an MSRP of DM3.60 which was about $1.20 in the mid-80s or about $3 today. Current prices however are quite a bit higher but more than a few of the cars I have are still in production. A quick google shows the new prices in the US of many of these to currently be around the $20 mark each.
Porsche 944 by Herpa
I consider Herpa, established in 1949, to be the manufacturer with slightly higher quality. Not as far as the actual assembly or correctness to scale goes (they are all extremely good and accurate in those aspects), but more to do with the detailing, i.e. lights, correct wheel trims, etc. You’ll note that on a Mercedes for example there will be a representation of the hood ornament in scale.
Others (especially ones produced in more recent decades) will have colored trim, lights, badging, and more. Some are also commissioned and sold by the manufacturers in their own gift shops and brand collections, I’d guess these model makers have worked from factory engineering drawings since at least the 1960’s, the detailing and scale is far more correct than that of many larger diecast cars of the era.
Mk1 VW Golf Cabrio by Wiking
Wiking is the other major player, headquartered in Berlin and founded in 1932 they have been owned by Siku since the 1980s. Siku always made some of the more detailed and interesting diecast cars when I was a kid, so this seems a good fit.
Today I’ll just share the passenger cars, I also have a good sized collection of taxis, emergency vehicles, commercial vans and trucks as well as a few other vehicles. For the last three or so decades I’ve been storing them in a cardboard box and moving it around with me, my wife had never seen the box open before today and accused me of making a very large ebay purchase. Not this time, honey, I’m just a hoarder… First a few pictures of various ones:
While not really a BMW guy in real life, I’m quite fond of the models I have, especially this Herpa 528i, I guess Claus Luthe’s design scales down quite well. The chromed lights and grille on this one give it a lot more sparkle than some of the other, slightly older ones. There are a couple of Alpina models in the collection as well with the famous side stripes.
The VW Transporter by Wiking is for some reason one of my favorites. I have about half a dozen of them in various colors and configurations.
The Mk1 VW Golf Cabrio, also by Wiking, is another of those that any self-respecting German would have in their collection. When I got these the MkII Golf was in full swing and I have multiples of those as well, four doors and two doors in GTI trim and various colors too.
I love this Mitsubishi L300 by Rietze, it’s such a cool piece with the bull bar on the front. The whole point of train scale modeling is realism, which of course translates to the cars, so the scale models are made as the real ones look, without garish stripes or unrealistic colors as perhaps a Hot Wheels and to a lesser extent a Matchbox car might be.
This Praline Porsche 356 Cabriolet demonstrates that metallic colors are of course available too, and that the interiors are depicted as well throughout everyone’s lineups. And yes, the wheels do roll, these aren’t necessarily static (although that’s how they mostly end up).
Jaguar XJ6 by Herpa
Auto Union Universal Wagon by Wiking – It has the Auto Union grille bar as opposed to the DKW
Mercedes 300E (W124) by Herpa
I set them all up on our counter and made a four-minute video below, as taking pictures of and posting all of them would be a little much…I hope you enjoy and am confident that most of you will be able to identify most of these cars. The majority are German, but there are a few foreigners and couple of Americans in there as well. If you watch, it’ll become obvious which are newer vs. older designs from a manufacturing perspective but many (most?) are still in production today. I also placed a few pennies among them for scale purposes.
That’s a lockdown post if I’ve ever read one! 😄
In France, we typically had Majorette when I was a kid. But those were pretty basic.
My older brother, who liked the finer things in life, had a great collection of Solido (all-metal, 1:43 scale) of the 30s classics – Rolls, Duesenberg, Bugatti and the like.
I had more eclectic tastes, but I don’t know what happened to the bulk of my collection. I moved too many times, I guess. Still have one Solido (a Tucker) from the olden days, but the rest are long gone.
Cool stuff Jim, and you still had the box after all these years. During our month long trip to Holland when I was 10 I was highly impressed with the detailed scale cars available. My souvenirs of Europe wound up being a pair of 2CVs and a VW Golf.
I don’t even know if I have them anymore, one of the 2CVs was just like this:
I spied what looked like a beige or cream 1963 ish Cadillac Limousine. Very nice collection!
It was the worst represented one in the collection though with those too small flat side windows. Maybe they assigned trainees to doing American cars.
I always dreamed of getting some of the Wiking miniatures (hardly toys!) that’s were sold alongside the Märklin trains in our local hobby shop, but the price was unaffordable at a time when I had to save two weeks’ allowance to buy a 49 cent Matchbox. And even that meant I had to scrounge a few pennies for sales tax, as I got just 25 cents a week. I do still have a 1/87 VW Beetle which was sold and branded by Lego, which looks just like a Wiking. You have a great collection and the remnants of my own, mostly 1/43 die cast cars, are pretty beat up by comparison.
Nice collection. I could only dream about cars to go along with my Maerklin trains. But I always admired those layouts with lots of appropriate cars. Especially those where the cars were curated with a greater sense of accuracy in terms of what one would likely see on the streets given the presumed location. Some got that down better than others.
Jim – I have many of these too and they have antecedents to my father’s habit of buying Marklin trains on his trips to Germany. Three of my Wiking models date to that period: black 190SL; Opel two door wagon; VW beetle.
My collection/interest exploded when I traveled to Germany frequently, starting in 1979. The Wikings & Herpas were available cheaply in every city. They were a great discovery and preferring German cars to American ones I was a frequent buyer of multiples in as many colors as I could find – especially Mercedes.
I remember a small differential in the price of Herpa cars. The metallic finish was slightly, maybe 10% or so, more expensive than a car with a flat finish. I’d buy both – especially 124s and 126s. Then, a year later, Herpa models would be available in different colors and I’d get them too.
New ones are unreasonably expensive now but I have been known to seek old ones out at Colorado model train events where they are still considered accessories for train set decoration. The car transporters are a good bonus find for display purposes.
Your comment the other day mentioning Wiking in another post is what motivated me to finally pull this box down and do something with it, I’d been thinking about doing so for years, so thank you for that.
Unlike toys like Hot Wheels and Matchbox, these differed in price too between models, likely as you said the color had something to do with it, but I recall there being a difference between models, maybe a 10-20% differential across the line, probably to do with lesser or greater amounts of detailing.
My little hometown dealer (toy and hobby shop) had a display case where he’d have one of every one and when I’d ask the owner to pull out whichever model would strike my fancy, he’d open a drawer and pull out the box containing that one and then open up the little sleeves they came in (something like ten to a sleeve for distribution to him) and show me the various available colors. Of course then the decision process would start all over again, with the result that I’d often get more than one…Herr Zahn was the most patient man in the world, standing there while I’d agonize over spending 3DM on the red or the gray one…or then pivot to yet a different one and start the process over again!
The larger big-city stores would usually have them in individual boxes stacked on the shelves with one large display case, easier for sales and browsing but without as much charm and magic.
As you know, you can have quite a large collection that takes up very little space, unlike the 1:24 scale models that I used to build a lot of too. I never did get into the 1:43 stuff, but totally see the appeal between the details, the handy size, and the sheer variety that has become available. The cost is the main deterrent as far as those go.
Jim – I suspected so. If you wish, I can e-mail some photos of the old, good stuff I have. Send me an e-mail note.
Wiking has quite a diverse modeling history. Their product has included 1:1250 scale plastic ship ID models, 1:200 scale plastic airplane models (including of course the Convairs & Constellations that were then current in the Lufthansa fleet) and 1:40 (not 1:43) scale plastic Volkswagen promotional models (extremely detailed and high quality) – mostly made during and prior to the ’50s.
My, what a great collection. Occasionally I mourn all the Matchbox and Corgi cars and trucks that vanished from my world, but fight the urge to recollect.
The ones I have left are housed in an old repurposed candy vending machine.
Very cool.
20 years ago when I worked in a hobby shop, we definitely carried a small collection of Herpa & Wiking vehicles. I think mostly Roco though as they seemed to do a lot of emergency & military trucks and we had some guys into those.
The other brand I bought some of was Eko from Spain. They were plastic & not as nice as the German stuff, but they made some oddball US cars that you wouldn’t find anywhere else.
The amount of detail, for their size, is astounding. One thing that I like, that shows up well in the photos with various examples in the background, is how the consistency of scale gives off a very realistic look. As nice as many of the old Matchboxes were (and I still have dozens of mine from “back when”), the scale was all over the place. The Pontiac Bonneville is much smaller than the Chevy Impala taxi, and the Studebaker wagon is as large as the Euclid dump truck. In your miniature car world, that kind of thing is not happening.
Nice collection, Jim. I have to admit my interest in cars came from the model railway side, a desire to get the ‘scenery’ right. Being in the UK that mean 1:76 scale though and in the 1970s to noughties the pickings were very slim, so much so I started making my own models. I did get some H0 ones too, mostly Herpa, Reitze and Wiking with some even Eko.
One thing these constant scale models show well is the relative sizes, something the Matchbox ‘fit the box’ scaling can’t do.
Three Astras… or two Kadetts and an Astra. All being the same scale it’s a compact way of showing how the model developed over the years.
I have the two older ones, they’re in the video right behind behind each other but white and covered in rally racing livery. The newer one is too new for me to have the HO but I’ve rented one in real life in the 90’s!
Who knew at the time that the so modern-looking in 1984 Kadett E would (shamefully) live on as the Pontiac LeMans…
We had that one come back for a while as a Daewoo, though it was around the time that the Astra G came out so was two generations behind soon after release. Wiking did the Astra G in 1:87 but I don’t have that one.
That’s an impressive collection, Jim! I always really liked the Wiking cars in particular and was always amazed at the level of detail on such a small scale, especially in contrast to the much larger contemporary Matchbox and cartoonish Hot Wheels that made up most of my fleet. I still have several dozen cars, but have never figured out what to do with them. After keeping them in good shape throughout my childhood (meaning: not sharing with my older brother, who liked to stage crashes and fires), they have now acquired a CC-like patina after surviving a flood in my parents’ basement 25+ years ago.
Nice collection, I also collected HO stuff in the late 80s/early 90s although more of my stuff was Kibri and Preisser truck models. These go even further with lots of working features like Hiab cranes, tail lifts, hook lifts and so on. My Roco RW fire engine has a working crane that lifts an equipment insert out of the body which in turn disgorges an HO scale portable pump. I’ve also got some fun ones like the Wiking set of a Trabant on a flatbed car carrier and several operation construction machines.
I need to find a display and finish some builds.
That’s one fine Sammlung!! My favorites are the VW and Mitsubishi vans. Can’t wait to see the bigger stuff.
Very hard to get all the proportions right when the scale is so tiny. That Porsche 356 has a very narrow rear track ( and not enough negative camber….)
I had a collection of Dinky and Corgi, which are larger, but soon graduated to Airfix kits and then Revell when I had more cash. Still have a ’36 Ford resto-mod in the attic…
Rather fond of MB W124, W100 and Land Rovers …
Maybe this time
There’s a 1/87 animated airport in Hamburg Germany. Incredible.
This is a cool collection – far different from the battered Hot Wheels cars many of us still hang onto.
Is that a Borgward Isabella at about 1:38?
The white one? Yes, a very well done one by Wiking. One of my favorite old cars and one that I then learned more about right here on CC about thirty years later..
It was hard to get a good focused pic of this one, a triple trailer semi from my youth. One of a few that survived, many more lost to the ages.
I loved to hook them up and then unhook the trailers, open and close the trailer doors, try to back up into a loading dock, etc. Great fun.
“As kids, model trains are likely something that interested a lot of us’
I can surely attest to that, I was crazy about my model train sets in the mid-50’s, first an American Flyer set and a bit later an HO set. I collected the made in England Lesney Matchbox series of HO scaled cars and vehicles, perfect for my big 4′ x 8′ train board, complete with a small town and a big mountain that I spent hours creating.
Shown here are the survivors, which I had mounted into a display box sometime in the 1980’s. They are all still in perfect condition, and proudly reside on my dresser top. My dad found the Italian engine and tender in a model shop in New York City on one of his business trips there, and I played endlessly with it. The Matchbox vehicles are, left to right, a ’59 Chevrolet, a ’58 Cadillac Fleetwood, a Jeep, a ’59 Ford Country Sedan pulling a travel trailer, and a quarry truck. At one time there was a steam shovel with rubber treads, but that disappeared long ago. I still have the original boxes packed away somewhere.
Thanks for sharing, Jim, you brought back some fond memories.
Jim,
Thanks so much for writing this great article.
I’m probably the only person on earth who feels this way, but the miniature car I want most is that of a 1982-96 GM A-Body. These cars hold great sentimental value for me, as my father owned a 1983 Buick Century for eight years (back when I was a young child). I always thought these cars were good looking, and they are certainly my favorite of the Roger Smithmobiles. But alas, I would be shocked if a miniature A-Body was ever made!
I remember as a kid going into a local hobby shop (long gone) being fascinated with the display of Wiking model cars. I was captivated by their detail–I still have a Wiking Unimog in two-tone green. I would love to have that e28 BMW, as I have one as a project.
Something new in 1/87 model cars: the Canadian model train manufacturer Rapido, well respected for their scrupulous attention to detail in HO model trains, has branched out into motor vehicles. A few years ago they introduced an HO scale General Motors New Look bus, available in several different schemes from well known transit agencies in the USA and Canada. In mid-May 2021 Rapido announced HO (1/87) scale Chevrolet B-body cars. They are to represent 1980-1985 Chevrolet Caprice and Impala sedans and wagons. Private vehicles are to be modeled in several colors, including station wagons in wood-side versions; and fleet vehicles, taxicabs and police cars, in authentic liveries. Not cheap; they will be priced at around $30 each.
I have no connection with Rapido Trains other than being a customer…when I can afford their product!
Love the post and looking into collecting them myself. Just one question: I already have one 1:87 mini cooper from a while ago and it has rubber wheels. I was wondering how common it is for them to have rubber wheels vs plastic wheels and what are your model’s wheels?