Jouef Automobiles

In recent blogs I have been extolling the virtues of these little plastic HO scale cars which at first glance seem hopelessly primitive and lacking in detail. Sorry to re-produce the same photograph but here is one zooming along a wet Parisien street in the late 1950s.

The model in question is the one on the RHS. The other car, coming towards us, is a more detailed Busch model; less keen on it.

Here are some Jouefs pictured in someone else's blog.

There is a wikipedia article about Jouef, the French toy manufacturer. Here is a passage from it relating to the cars.

"Around 1960, Jouef made a series of plastic 1:87 (HO) scale cars, trucks and buses mainly for display with its train kits. These were mainly French vehicles including a Peugeot 203 and 403, Simca Chambord, Citroen DS 19, and a few Renaults including the 16 hatchback. These were simple one-piece mouldings with simple plastic wheels, but the proportions were nice."

The key point is that last one: proportion is absolutely critical to rendering anything in model form.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Last night's dinner:

Plaice, spinach and poached egg.

*********************************************************************************
Currently listening to Cassius:

####################################################################################
Tango update:

Have been practising walking tango-style up and down the hall, with my wife. Rather irritatingly, and despite her saying that she wouldn't waste her time going to such a foolish class, she turned out to be far superior to me at this activity AND had the insolence to issue advice to me as to how it should be done.

The difficulty I have is walking with my legs relatively close together. Also, I'm hugely flat-footed. So the challenge is to transform my habitual gait of 60 years which is basically that of a gorilla to that of John Inman. Fortunately, the man goes forwards all the time (the woman backwards all the time).