Mulhouse Friday March 14, 2025

…of the two long, straight, well-formed lines of cars waiting for the gates of the Mulhouse exhibition center to open on Friday, March 14, 2025. We are a stone’s throw from Germany and Switzerland. There is a sense of rigor. In comparison, the line is much more disorderly, even chaotic, in Milan during the Novegro show. We are all here for the biannual event dedicated to 1/43. This is also the title we read on the signs indicating the event in town. These three numbers are also displayed in giant letters on the top of the building. Impressive. I am reassured, I am in the right place. This event has a very long history. We first came with my father in 1978, and it had already been around for a few years. 

The event is well organized. The exhibition benefits from modern facilities: a large free parking lot, just steps from the building, which houses a splendid and vast room, heated (in March it’s still cold in Alsace), and very well lit. This is unfortunately not always the case in this type of building. The aisles are spacious. In short, everything is in place for the party to be a success. It was. Each swap meet is also a personal story. Its degree of success depends, of course, on the finds we make or the takings at the end of the day. At the very beginning of the swap meet, a professional friend, Francis Faucon, calls out to me as we turn an aisle and says, “I might have something for you.” He then shows me a Bedford dump truck, equipped with a spreading system. 

I smile, because I think I recognize a truck from the English firm Automec, a rare sight, even on the other side of the Channel. He then replies, “I went on your blog and I didn’t see it!” It’s an Israeli Gamda! After 50 years of collecting, discovering an object I had never heard of is a real joy.

So we have to remain modest, we will still discover models of this kind, there is always something to learn and that is also what keeps us going. If the building is large, the event is friendly. People are welcoming in Mulhouse. In a difficult time, it is nice to be able to come together to share a common passion. It is in places like this that I trained, in contact with others. It is by talking, by seeing, by taking in hand that we best understand the models and discover variations. I thought about this again when seeing the program for the week.

Let’s take a look at some of the cars produced in Liverpool in the mid-1960s on this week’s menu: two Triumph Spitfires and a Jaguar MK X. We’ve positioned the first two together so you can clearly see the two very different shades. One is darker than the other. It shares this shade with the Rolls Royce Silver Cloud III.

The third, the Jaguar MK X, has had three very different shades of metallic blue: from very light to dark, with an intermediate, classic version in the center. The one we have for sale is the darkest. We are not all equal when it comes to perceiving these variants, which require experience and a good visual memory. I enjoy spotting them… knowing that many variants are still to be found. Just this day, as I write these lines, I noticed the existence of two very different blues on the NSU Prinz IV from Solido…

Let’s stay with this manufacturer. We’ve programmed three Vintage Aston Martin DB5s. In addition to the color shades, you can also combine the interior color variations. It all depends on where you want to place the color scale. It’s hard to remain indifferent to this Aston Martin. It’s a success; Solido has perfectly synthesized the lines of this beautiful coupe. It’s worth noting that its DB4, released a few years earlier, served as the basis. At the beginning of its 100 series, Solido had an Aston Martin period, since it also offered the beautiful DBR, winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1959.

Let’s get back to our DB5. There are four interior colors: white, beige, red, and black. The turquoise-finished version is available this week, in two different interior finishes. You’ll notice that the wire wheels may or may not be chrome-plated. This helps us place them in time. The first versions are devoid of it. The color of the interior design influences the visual perception of the miniature. The harmony is more or less successful. It’s a real pleasure to spot a new variant that completes a sample. I know something about that. 

We can project ourselves quite far into this search, and pleasant surprises are possible. This quest is the very essence of the collector, always ready to push the boundaries. The day we no longer have desire, the collection ends.

The other color for sale, metallic red, is a difficult color to obtain. I collected two very different shades. This color was mainly seen in exports. I remember finding a number of them in Scandinavia and Great Britain. It suits the model well and is early in production.

While we can try to master, with more or less certainty, the color variants of a collection dedicated to the 100 series from Solido, it is not the same for a collection dedicated to the Norev variants! A lifetime will not be enough for the task! This is not a reason to give up! Why? The production of the Villeurbanne firm is extraordinary. Not only did the models remain in the catalog for a long time, but they were also produced and distributed in large quantities. This was the largest production of 1/43 models in France. The result is an infinite number of body color variants for enthusiasts who want to trace the history of a model.

I recently acquired a batch of Morris Minis. The person had managed to gather about fifteen colors. He was far from having found them all. When you see the number of different models in the Norev catalog and multiply this figure by twenty or even thirty, given the possibilities of body color variations, it makes you think!

One of the pleasures of this Norev collection is to discover a miniature in a shade that one did not imagine on this model. For my part, for the models distributed in a case with a black and yellow cardboard base, I am content with a single color but I make sure that it is the most improbable, the craziest, the least realistic. This week we have three Morris Mini. Did you know the turquoise one? It is very elegant on the DS19 convertible, and I did not expect to find it on this Morris. I also appreciate the two shades of gray also offered, particularly the dark gray.

In the unlikely color genre, I particularly like the Germanic coupé, DKW Junior finished in fluorescent orange, also on the program. We could, for example, use this color as a common thread and try to gather all the Norev models finished in this shade…

They are at the very end of production. The coral-colored model does not seem to have any significant color nuances, this is not the case for the pale blue one. Enjoy these beautiful miniatures that are difficult to obtain. To return to the Mulhouse stock exchange, and to illustrate my point, I saw a 4CV on a table that intrigued me. I had and knew this color in my collection, but after checking, when I got home, I realized that I did not have this variant equipped with a key mechanism… there it is once again demonstrated that a collection is never finished.

Vincent Espinasse