Tri-Ang Minic 1940 Vauxhall Cabriolet Wind-Up Toy, Made In England.

Tri-Ang Minic 1940 Vauxhall Cabriolet Tinplate Wind-Up Car Toy with Original Key, Made In England By Lines Bros Ltd.

100% all Original, Paint In Very Good Condition, Wheels Would Need To Be Replaced, Comes with Original Minic Key For winding.

Made By Lines Bros Ltd, a British Toy Manufacturer Of The 20th Century, Operating Under The Tri-Ang Toy Brand Name.

Lines Bros Ltd, at Its Peak In 1947, was Claimed By The Company To Be The Largest Toy Maker In The World.

Under The Tri-Ang Toys Brand Name, Lines Bros Ltd also Made Children's Bicycles, Such as The Unity Dragster TT.

Tri-Ang Range Of Minic-Branded Tin Metal Model Road Vehicles appeared In The June 1935 Issue Of Meccano Magazine and Continued To Sell Through The 1940s and 1950s.

Construction

Initially, the Minic road vehicles were produced using painted tinplate with a "tab and slot" assembly method, and although it's common nowadays to look down on tinplate cars and to expect them to be more "toyish" than models produced with more modern methods, tinplate allowed more precise scalings for very thin parts such as window frames and wheel arch edges - areas where a designer creating for plastic mouldings or cast metal would have to make the parts artificially "fat" so that they could be produced reliably and wouldn't be prone to breakage.

The result with the Minic range was a set of models that were startlingly realistic when viewed up-close, and the pack artwork for the Minic vehicle range stressed the degree of accuracy - "All to Scale". The models were even more desirable (and impressive) when one realized that each one managed to incorporate a clockwork motor.

Clockwork Motors and Drive Variations

The Minic series clockwork motors were specially designed to allow modification for different gearings, so that, for instance, a racing car ran faster than a conventional car. The steamroller's mechanism was geared to run slowly, and it would actually halt and then reverse, just like a real roller driving back and forth over a section of the road surface to flatten it. The "Learner Car" was distinguished not just by its "L -plate", but by having a deliberately misaligned back axle and almost gripless tinplate back types, so that the car skidded and swerved wildly when run. The Minic breakdown Lorry actually had two clockwork motors – one for driving the wheels and another for powering the crane.

Item Code - TOY7B44BREA

Width: 5"  Height: 1 1/2"  Depth: 2 1/4"  Weight: 84 g