#442 I.M.U. – OPEL GT (Around 1985)

The Acronym I.M.U. means Interspeed Modellauto Ülsmann. This company was based in Berlin, and offered some models in 1:87 and  1:160 scales. There is not much information about it on the internet, I could only find some German texts explaining some facts about the company. What it seems clear is that nobody seems to be very keen on this small cars.

There are metal and plastic cars. Apparently first they were made of metal, but at some point they changed to plastic and they kept using plastic until the end of the company in 1991.

It is also known, that other brands made models for I.M.U., that is, I.M.U. simply repackaged and distributed other brand models as their own. Miniatur precision models from the Czech Republic or Stettnisch Modell GmbH from Germany produced models for I.M.U.

This second company would keep all I.M.U. casts when the company closed in 1991. Jörg Stettnisch was trying to settle a new company for the manufacture of small models. He would fpund after a few years Euro Model. The problem with I.M.U. models is that some are marked on its base while other aren’t, and later models from Stettnisch are also marked, although they shouldn’t.

From this brand I only know my own car (an Opel GT) plus other models I have seen in pictures. For me, they have a good (above the average) quality, and are nice models. The Opel GT is not only nice, but rare, since it hasn’t been manufactured in small scale by any other toy company.

The company would produce a few Wiking replicas of trucks during its last years of existence. These seem to be used by collectors to “repair” genuine Wiking models. These trucks are the Magirus S3500 and the Mercedes L5000. There is also a Porsche 356.

A list of all I.M.U. models can be found here: http://www.87thscale.info/imu.htm

 

 

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: OPEL GT
• Scale: 1:87
• Year: Around 1985
• Company: I.M.U. (West Germany)
• Size: approx. 4 cm