It seems almost unforgivable that in 641 entries, not a single one dealt directly with Dinky Toys. The reason is that Dinky Toys in Spain, where I lived, and Austria, where I live now, these models are quite rare. I didn´t have many models of this brand until a few weeks/months ago.
Dinky is one of the traditional die-cast manufacturers from England, not for nothing is a brand of Meccano Ltd, at the time one of the most powerful toy companies in the world. Dinky was active between 1935 and 1979. The history of the company can be read in the Wikipedia or in any of the many books related to Dinky Toys.
Because this time I am showing a relatively new car made by Dinky, I will only add a few lines about the later years and what happened to Dinky's brand after 1979. One of the many revolutions in the die-cast world, to which Dinky somehow had to adapt, was the Hot Wheels appearance with low friction wheels. Dinky had to adapt some of its models starting in 1967 to allow a new type of wheels and axles. Meanwhile, Dinky was still competing with Corgi to offer new and interesting features, like 4 practicable doors in the same model, aerials, jewel headlights and so on. All this great details raised the price considerably, and this would later be a problem when trying to compete with cheap Asian manufacturers.
In the 70s, there was already a considerable level of competitors coming from Asia, so Dinky started lowering the quality of some of its models. Collectors argue that some cars in this period are really badly casted, while other models still have remarkable accuracy and quality.
Dinky Toys finally closed in 1979. As many other die-cast manufacturers in England, and then in other parts of Europe, the competition from the rest of the world lead many traditional brands to disappear in the early 80s. The trademark Dinky, however, was purchased by Matchbox International in the late 80s, and some editions of Matchbox's cars were released under this brand, most of them oriented to adult collectors. Since 2000, the brand has never been used again.
The Lamborghini was available for the first time in 1969, while the real car dates from 1967. It was made in several colours through the years, including yellow/white, green/white, gold/white and blue/white versions, all of them seem to have different wheels. The blue and gold models are clearly the newest ones, with plastic one-part wheels. The yellow version has the oldest type of wheels, and the green one, as you can see in the pictures, has an intermediate type of wheels.
The base is marked with the patent number, but there is no scale indication.
Althugh the real car was made only one time (one unit), it has been made into a toy by many manufacturers, see for example: Guisval #23, Matchbox #69 or Yatming and Zylmex #631. Also Nacoral made a very impressive version with practicable doors.
FACTS AND FIGURES:
- Name: LAMBORGHINI MARZAL (Nr. 189)
- Scale: Around 1:43
- Year: 1969 (available until 1974)
- Company: Dinky Toys (England)
- Size: approx. 9 cm
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