Hotchkiss Grégoire

It’s made of plastic and it doesn’t even look much like the real thing, yet certain collectors will happily part with a considerable sum of money to own this toy car made in France in the 1950s by Minialuxe. Why? Because it’s a replica of a rare vehicle, the Hotchkiss Grégoire, and because no other toy manufacturer thought of modelling it at the time.

The Grégoire was the brainchild of Jean-Albert Grégoire (1899-1992), whose design for an unusual luxury car was bravely taken up by Hotchkiss in 1950. Only 247 were built in four years, including a very small number of Chapron coupés and cabriolets.

The Grégoire was notable more for its advanced engineering than its rather ungainly styling. It was common in the ’50s for car manufacturers to use artists’ illustrations that flattered their cars, making them look longer and lower than they really were; Russian-born Alexis Kow was a master of this art and the Minialuxe model clearly took its inspiration from his sales brochure interpretations of the car rather than the real thing. Those who want an accurate scale model of the Grégoire should look elsewhere – to the recent 1:43-scale diecast version by Ixo, for example – but the naive charm of the Minialuxe does have its own appeal.

Minialuxe started making plastic cars circa 1953/54 in the town of Oyonnax in Eastern France, and the Hotchkiss was one of its earliest subjects. Produced in a wide variety of bright colours, including red, yellow or orange, and usually fitted with white tyres, it was also issued as a rare taxi variant and can sometimes be found with a roof-rack carrying plastic suitcases. Some examples are fitted with a friction motor on the rear axle – ironic, given that the key feature of J-A Grégoire’s car was its front-wheel-drive layout!