Little Wheels News

05 Apr

Corgi 211 Studebaker Golden Hawk

Posted by Andrew Wood in Corgi, Diecast models, Little Wheels

Mettoy launched the Corgi Toys brand in 1956, the year I was born - which maybe explains why I've always been so fond of it. They began with six British saloon cars, good solid fare like Rover, Austin & Hillman. These cars were in stock colours for the real cars, sensible greens greys & beiges.

They quickly learnt that boys wanted something a little more exotic in their toyboxes and began to use not only brighter colours but more exotic cars, ones we didn't see every day on the British roads. In February 1958 they launched their first of many American cars - the Studebaker Golden Hawk. it was interesting of Corgi to choose an oddball maker like Studebaker but typical of their quest for innovation and engineering novelty

There are three versions of the Corgi Studebaker Golden Hawk. The first two in 1958 were a freewheeling version in blue with gold painted side flashes and the white mechanical one with the friction flywheel motor. Both had windows but no suspension or seats.

Later in 1962 it was given the S treatment receiving seats and suspension and also becoming truly golden, being vacuum plated in gold or with a painted gold finish, both with white side flashes.

Rootes Group in the UK were heavily influenced by Studebaker in the styling of their Audax family of cars - the Sunbeam Rapiers and Humber Sceptres of the early 60s have several design cues from this car, the central square grille with the small grilles to the sides, the line of the front wings and the wrap around rear window with the reverse slope on the C pillar all reflect the American car.

It was an excellent call by Rootes.

12 Mar

Models of Yesteryear - are they coming back?

Posted by Andrew Wood in Collecting as an investment, Diecast models, Fowler, Little Wheels, Models of Yesteryear, Thomas

0 Comments

There was a period in the 80s & 90s when diecast collectables were very much on trend as an investment as well as a hobby to build value over the years. Old Dinky toys were selling for significant amounts of money, a Foden 8 wheel truck with chains made over £12,000. So lots of people went out and bought new diecasts to put in the loft to mature and become very valuable in 20-30 years or so.

The obvious choice at the time were Matchbox Models of Yesteryear. They were cheap and plentiful and there was a fashion at the time for everything 20s & 30s - remember The Sting, Great Gatsby etc?

So many Models of Yesteryear were carefully salted away that the collector market became over-supplied with very good boxed examples and over the last few years values plummeted. A couple of years ago I was dumping good, boxed items at toy fairs at two for £5.

Towards the end of last year I noticed a change. I'd always done well with the early yellow box MOYs and the much later highly detailed series such as the fire engines and Beers of the World trucks. The problem had been with straw, woodgrain & maroon boxes from the 70s & 80s.

These items have now started to gain some traction, a lot of it coming from Eastern Europe & Russia, although. now it is becoming more general and I'm pleased that these models, for which I've always had a great affection are being appreciated once again. As a child I owned and loved a blue Thomas Flyabout and I still have my battered old Fowler Showman's engine, treasured members of my toy box in the early 60s.

As I was adding more MOYs to the on-line shop this morning I was surprised to see that I had got over 70 of them currently on sale - a year ago this would have been few or none. The woodgrain & straw boxes are still a bit slow but maroon boxes and the 1960s pink & yellow window boxes have really become popular once again.

I'm glad to see a well-deserved return to popularity of an old favourite.

03 Mar

First Post

Posted by Andrew Wood in care, Diecast models, Little Wheels, service

1 Comments

This is Little Wheels' new on-line shop. Little Wheels though is not new. We opened for business in October 2011 and since then have shipped over 10,000 diecasts to 6,500 (ish) customers in 70 countries - as soon as I type that it is out of date!

Let me introduce us, we are a two-man father & son team based out of Harwell in South Oxfordshire in the beautiful English countryside. I'm Andrew & my son is Phil. We both love cars, big and small, and we hope that comes through in the care we take with our models and service we give to our customers. I'm a Jag man, on my third one now which is an old shape XJ with the all-alloy bodywork. Phil still has to drive his Mum's Citroen C1 (shame), but wants a Lotus Elise very badly indeed.

To date we have traded from our old website at little-wheels.co.uk, from eBay and from Amazon. We have (at the time of writing) 6,820 positive feedbacks on eBay. We've launched this new site because our old one is getting too hard to buy from. It was originally set up as a resource for collectors and to make it as complete as possible I leave diecasts on there after they are sold to build up the reference library for collectors. This is great in one way as there are 200,000 pictures - but it makes it impossible to see what is for sale and what is there for reference.

So - we continue to sell on eBay and Amazon and have added this smart new site. The old site will be kept in an adapted form and will continue to grow giving a free place to go to research your diecasts.

Welcome to our new shop & blog and be sure to come back and see the new models added every day and for more information, views, opinions & insights into the world of vehicles both models and full size.