O Scale Motor Vehicle Chronicle Jan.31.

Love the Caddy. Most of the 57's you see in die-cast are El Dorados with a different style of tail fins, but I always liked the square fins. They reminded me of a toy spaceship I had when I was a kid.

Here's a '38 Cadillac coupe I picked up off eBay the other day. It was made by Rextoys in Portugal. I have several Rextoys cars, but I had never seen this model before. It's huge. A Brooklin Buick is next to it for size comparison.

Southwest Hiawatha:
Rextoys Made the ’38 Cadillac as a Convertible Coupe, a Convertible Sedan, a Formal Sedan and a Coupe DeVille (Town Car). They also did a nice ’34 Chrysler Airflow, a ’40 Packard Sedan and ’35 Fords in a verity of bodies.
The fins on the ’57 & ’58 Cadillac are similar to the ’55 & ’56 El Dorados.

I now have 9 American Excellence models. This level of detail in a model costing less than $100. was unheard of a few years ago. I recently got the '54 Packard HT.

Southwest:  Bob, is that Cadillac not a 1/43 scale model?  Compared to the Brooklin

Buick it looks too big, although it might be the longer wheel base V-16.  I wonder if it wasn't built to some other scale like 1/40?  From the photo it doesn't seem to be in the 1/36 scale, either.

I guess that I have a couple of older Rextoy cars on my layout, and while they're not quite up to the standards of Brooklin, they are pretty good and look nice compared to all the rest of the Roadchamps, Ertl and other inexpensive model cars.  My main goal is to have a bit of variety on the layout.  Too many of the cheaper die cast cars looks a bit phoney, but just a few Brooklins in the middle of a traffic jam adds immeasurably to the realism. 

Paul Fischer

I was going to ask the same thing, but I think it is scale. The V-16 Cadillacs of that period were huge, 431 cid engine and over 18 feet long with the factory bodywork - about a foot longer than the biggest Buick Roadmaster and about two feet longer than the Buick Special (I think that is a special, not the roadmaster, in the photo - hard to tell.  I have a mid 30s Cadillac V-16 sedan that is 1:43 but so large I didn't believe it was scale when it arrived but looked up the prototypes dimensions and discovered it was in fact 1:43. Its a tiny smidgen shorter than a '59 Caddy sedan but way taller and so it looks TOO BIG - so large it looks out of place, so I just don't put it on the layout.

My favorite 16 cylinder "when I win the lottery" car is the Marmon, aluminum body,

aluminum engine, and Brooklin has made several versions of that.  They don't look

as large as the Cadillac, Duesenberg, or Pierce Arrow.  I used to see an original Marmon 16 Victoria coupe in a nearby old car show that had been driven through WWII with all the plugs pulled out of one bank, on eight cylinders.  The president of my

railroad usually parks a Brooklin Marmon 16 coupe in front of the company offices.

In reply to questions and comments about the Cadillac:

It is a V16, and it is marked 1/43 on the bottom. As Lee suggested, the Buick parked next to it is a Special. At 18 feet long it is about the same size as my Dodge pickup - pretty big for a 2-door coupe.

I was aware of the other Rextoy Cadillacs, but this was the first time I've seen the 2-door coupe. The town cars with the driver exposed to the weather are often seen on eBay, as are the sedans. The open cars are less common. I like the Rextoy cars a lot and I have a bunch of the Fords, Chryslers, and Packards. They were made with many paint variations, including taxis and WWII-era military staff cars. One correction - the Airflow is a '35. It has the modified, toned-down grille, not the full-waterfall grille of the '34. Brooklin made a '34, and I think someone else as well, maybe Durham. 

I think that within the limited range of models offered, the Rextoy cars are good value, especially for a train layout. 

You are correct, thanks for pointing out my error I know it is a '35. I just mistyped 34.

For the benefit of those who said they want a Cadillac couple like mine, there are two of them on the Bay right now. Here's a link to a red one. Or maybe it's rose, or maroon. Lousy picture. There's also a black one, but they want 80 bucks for it.

Red Caddy

Another interesting Rextoy variation is a series of convertibles with famous or infamous people being chauffeured. There's one with the notorious Italian porn star La Cicciolina, who was elected to the Italian parliament, and I seem to recall a Marilyn Monroe and an FDR.

Cadillac built two different V16 engines between 1930 and 1940. The first was a 452 cubic inch 90 degree overhead valve built from 1930 to 1937. The second was a 431 Cubic inch 135 degree valve in block built from 1938 to 1940.
It would seem foolish to develop a second V16 during the height of the depression but Cadillac was hoping for military contracts.

It would also seem a bit regressive to go from an OHV engine to a flathead, but I suppose the military might prefer the flathead because (in the context of the times) it would be easier to maintain and run on lower octane gas. 

Although the overhead valve engine is more technological advanced, flat heads were normal for most luxury cars of the era. They ran quieter than the contemporary overheads of the day. Ease of service also entered the equation. The Dodge Power Wagon developed for the military ran a Flathead 6 until 1969.

I can see where the flathead would have been quieter until the invention of hydraulic lifters. OHV engines with solid lifters make a lot of noise and it's quite audible because it isn't damped out by the block. The Jeep used an F-head engine (one overhead valve, one in the block) for a long time, well into the 60's if I recall correctly. This was basically the same engine used in the original WWII Jeep. 

I think my father may have had a patent or two on hydraulic lifter design. He worked on the original 1955 Chevy small block V-8 project. 

My Rex Caddy Coupe in green shown with a Motormax Buick. The Caddy measures 5 1/4 long. I also have the one shown in another post, that one is in storage. Also shown is a Rex Airflow. Amuch better Airflow is made by IXO.

Bob

They were 222 inches plus or minus a few long.  222/43 = 5 1/6 inch.  Close enough for me. 

That Buick was a pretty big car.  The Cadillac was truly a monster!

Southwest Hiawatha

The Cadillac OHV V12s & V16s had hydraulic valve lifters but the motor oil of the era was not up to the job. Chevrolets, Buicks and many Nashes of the era had overhead valves but I am not sure of the lifters.
The Jeep was originally developed by the American Bantmm Co. as the Bantam Reconicence Car (BRC) but Bantam didn’t have the manufacturing capacity and had a weak engine based on Austin designs. The military awarded the contract to Willys Overland to build them partly because they had a superior engine. Willys couldn’t keep up with demand so Ford was contracted supplement production. The origional Jeep engine was the “Go-Devil’ 4 cylinder flat head

Here are a couple of nice 1938 Packards made by Automodello. The yellow 1:1 was in the movie Chinatown.

Bob

I also have both. The IXO is much better detailed and finished except that it lacks the prototypical roof insert panel, which the Rextoys version has. Back in the day, stamping presses weren't big enough to punch out a whole roof at once, so most cars had a hole in the roof filled by a canvas or metal panel. The "turret top" first built for GM by Fisher Body in 1934 was a major innovation. 

Richard...I wanted you to know that this is one of my favorite ongoing threads.  I have hundreds of vehicles but none of them as special or collectible as the ones I have seen here.  This is such a great thread that helps those that are looking for unique cars and trucks to go along with their layouts....

Alan

  The turret top was found on Chevrolet Master models in 1935, and I assume was

available on all of their makes except maybe more conservative Cadillac in that year.  I think it first appeared in 1934 on LaSalle, which was GM's test bed for the new styling, and may have been a hope to offset the engine downgrade from Cadillac V-8 to Olds straight 8 that year.  I still await a Brookin (or anybody!) 1937 LaSalle, the

first year the car regained the Cadillac engine.

I also enjoy this topic. Some beautiful models.

I have a Rextoys catalog (actually a large fold-out brochure) that is in French and not dated. It is not of much help, since it shows many models that were never made, like a line of '38 Buicks, '37 Chevrolets, and '35 Lincolns...as well as Piece Arrows and Auburns. Talk about empty promises!

They do show the Cadillac coupe in lt.green.

Somebody owns the Rextoys tooling. They were Excellent models hopefully someone will put them back in production.

love those  Dodge cars ,, I remember going to see my Grandfather who work at Modern Motors in Montreal and stopping at the show room   and  drooling over those models   I  was only 11   but did I want to own  one of them ... thanks for the shots  they are just so great

This is one of my favorite threads!

Jeff C

I have a lot of the English versions of the Rextoy catalog,  small folders that I think

fit in the box with the model.  I will have to look (packed away) but do not remember

the green Cadillac or Chevrolet, but did the Buick, Lincoln, and, I think others,

that never appeared.  I was amused, well, not really, annoyed, that Brookin came out

with a Lincon and Buicks, at three times the price after Rextoy disappeared.

Robert:
I would love to have one of those Canadian only Plymouth based Dodges. Once in a while you would see one here in Rochester. They were quite unique and I wish someone would do a 1/43rd model.

Nothing like the 50s.

For those of you going to York...DiecastDirect told me that you can ask them to bring a model you want to the Orange Hall for you to pick up. I'm not sure if that covers ANY model or just American Excellence models. Good way to see the model in person and save shipping costs. Email them for details (I do know that you do not have to pre-pay it).

Anyone in the market for a good and used car?

Thanks for the heads up, Joe. I would sure like to pick up the 1959 Dodge Custom Royal Lancer convertible pictured above.

And Richard, thanks for starting this thread every weekend, I really look forward to it.

I'll take that '56 Ford Crown Victoria.

A busy thoroughfare near me had a string of used car dealers similar to yours. Some had good reputations and some were a good place to stay away.

I wonder if anybody ever saw a Tucker on a used car lot (blue car to the right in

front of the PV gas station above)?  As a kid who was a voracious reader who read the newspaper cover to cover, and who got challenged by the librarian when I checked out some mature novels, such as they were in the 1950's, when I'd read everything else, I'd read about the Tucker, but never saw one, except decades later in museums. I

don't remember even seeing one at Hershey.  One on a used car lot had to be possible, (I'd like to see a photo of that) but they were automatic collectibles when new after all the publicity, legal hassle, etc.

The only Tucker I ever saw was displayed at the Phila. auto show a year ago. I really don't think it was a good looking car, especially with the odd shaped front fenders. They made a big deal over the central headlight that turned in the direction of your turn, but it was none-movable in the actual cars.

I don't remember if Bill Harrah had a Tucker in his Reno collection in its heyday, which I was lucky enough to go through a couple of times before he died.  He probably did,

he didn't miss much.  I usually looked hardest at the earlier cars.  I haven't seen

Tuckers show up in the Hemmings' auction ads but, maybe I missed them.

There's one in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Here's a link to a photo of it on display.

Tucker

Richard - Thanks for starting this interesting thread on a regular basis.  Always interesting cars to talk about and learn about.

Art