Wednesday, June 22, 2011

#31 GUILOY – HONDA 750 FOUR POLICE (Ref. 277) and KAWASAKI MACH IV-H2 (Ref. 284) (1975)


It has been almost three months since I started this blog. One of my first articles dealt with a scale motorbike from the Italian company Mercury (see #2), which shared casts with the Spanish company guiloy. This time I’ll show a model made by this Spanish company. If I had a picture of both motorbikes, we could observe that they are exactly the same scale, built with the same materials, and both having the same quality. They are very detailed for that scale, more if we consider that it was made in 1975. In this model for example, we can appreciate the speedometer, the windshield, the antenna, beautiful stickers, turn signals,...
 
Most motorcycles like this one I have found in the internet have broken parts. The lights, exhaust pipes, antenna and windshield are often broken or missing. Although the toy is built strongly, it is not unbreakable, pay attention if you're looking for one of these.
 
As a curiosity, this same model was made by Matchbox in a smaller scale (~1:35) in 1977 (Police Motorcycle, Superfast Series, no. 33). It came with a blue rider, but without windshield or antenna, and the detail level is much lower.
 


Guiloy disappeared in summer 2010 after more than 35 years creating models of cars, trucks and motorcycles. The company started in 1974 producing 1:24 motorcycles (precisely this series, but also 1:32, 1:18, 1:10, 1:6), trucks since 1977 and cars since 1984 (1:64, 1:43, and smaller scales).

Although the first small scale cars were not specially well casted and done, its motorbikes are probably among the best scale models ever. In my opinion, they’re much better than the modern Maisto (Made in China, with many plastic parts), or Bburago. Their last catalogues were an amazing collection of motorcycles in several scales and cars in 1:18.
 
Picture scanned from a Guiloy Catalogue (1975), courtesy of Ángel Cabrera (artecar24, website not active any more)
 
As explained above, the italian company Mercury and Guiloy shared some casts, but this model seems to have been only available by Guiloy.
 
UPDATE: Another model found by chance at a flea market: Kawasaki Mach IV-H2, beautiful model in bright green
 
 
 


FACTS AND FIGURES
  • Name: HONDA 750 c.c. POLICE (Ref. 277) and KAWASAKI MACH IV-H2 (Ref. 284)
  • Scale: 1:24
  • Year: 1975
  • Company: Guiloy (Spain)
  • Size: approx. 10 cm

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