I bought this toy car in some kind of collector's fair held in the city I live. The seller was a guy who knew well what he had, and what he was offering. The car is rare, there is no discussion here, so I decided to keep it despite being more pricy than the other models I usually buy. At first I thought it was Russian, because of the name and the characters written on the base, but when I arrived home I found out a bit about MEHANOTEHNIKA.
The Company is based in the current Slovenia, although by the time it was manufactured it was still Yugoslavia. I was very surprised to see that the Company still exists, although since 1990 it is called MEHANO. There is a bit of information on the Wikipedia and also on their own website (see corporate history).
If you pay attention to the pictures, you'll notice the similarity between this model and the one made by... Norev (Mini Jet Series). It is clear to me, that the cast is the same, so it is for sure no bootleg, copy or any other counterfeit product. Also, if you have this car in your hand you can notice the high quality with which it is made. Norev probably sold the casts to Mehanotehnika when the models were discontinued at the end of the 80s, and Mehano continued making them. I guess these were sold only inside Yugoslavia, but I cannot be sure about it, maybe they were exported to other nearby countries.
The base of the car is much simpler that the Norev equivalent, and it only shows the word Mehanotehnika in capital letters over a plain base. The base and how the axles attach to the base it identical to Norev, so I guess these models have the same problems if the axles go inside of the body and the wheels stay inside and the body lower than usual. So handle with care.
Unfortunately, I do not own the Peugeot 305 by Norev, so I chose another Peugeot (a 604) for comparison. If I ever get one, I'll change these two last pictures for more clarity.
UPDATE: I add pictures of a great Renault 30 in bright yellow, acquired some time after publishing this entry.
FACTS AND FIGURES:
- Name: PEUGEOT 305 and RENAULT 30
- Scale: Approx. 1:64
- Year: Around 1988
- Company: Mehanotehnika (Yugoslavia, today it would be Slovenia)
- Size: approx. 7 cm
I have a few of those... I don't know which I'm missing because there's no list of models they made.
ReplyDeleteI do not know either, I don't think there are many collectors out there, but there must be some. These could try to start a list on the models they have, or maybe find some catalogue or official document that explains how many models were available.
DeleteThanks for the comment!