The Turin influence
Stephen Paul Hardy finds himself under the spell of a very exciting range from Italy.
Carrozzeria Ghia is, of course, just one of many names connected with Turin’s automotive industrial heritage. Many are now long established, but it is one of the modern ones that has drawn my attention - and its range of vintage style subjects manufactured in 1/76 scale.
Thanks to an introduction by Maz Woolley, via a couple of his many enjoyably, informative, posts on MAR Online, I am now besotted by the range of Italian die- and resincast models from Officina 942. All of its subjects are of Italian automobiles - many of which I know very little about. But their charismatic appeal is so high that it made me muse, in curious mood, about why.They are very colourful, simple castings with solid windows and have an intentionally retro appeal. But the attraction goes deeper than that.
Interestingly, although the Schuco Piccolo models have a valid provenance trail that gives modern ones some sort of inferred vintage validity, the range has never particularly appealed to me - similarly the Bub range. So what is it about the Officina 942 range that makes them different?
The one factor that I can quantify is that they resonate with me like Wiking models of the 1950s. What I cannot quantify is why so many of us are just so downright contrary and contradictory.
As a schoolboy I longed for 1/43 scale cars that had glazing and interiors instead of the old stuff of my father’s boyhood, and I got them (thank you, Corgi). In the 1970s when I was ‘collecting’, it was the glazed Wikings not the “Unverglast” that I particularly sought. Currently, I revel in the increasing complexity of detail that new models are released in.
Maybe it is that fact that the range is new, fresh and a novelty to me. Maybe so many of the subjects they model - like the 1946 Fiat 1500 Cabriolet Gran Sport Carrozzeria Ghia - just have an uncluttered, evocative, appeal to my senses. Maybe it is because they engender a sort of spontaneous automotive contentment at pocket-money affordable prices. (Yes pocket money values still feature in my budgeting.) Maybe it is the age old insatiable hunger for “something new, something different” (again).
I hope this has whetted your appetite for this fabulously quirky range. If so, there will be a much longer and more comprehensive article in the November issue, by Andrew Ralston. DC