Question of the Day: Can You Find a Diecast Replica of Your First Car?

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

After I started getting weird diecast toy cars as LeMons Supreme Court baksheesh, my office has become crowded with stuff like a 1:43 scale Leyland P76 and a 1:40 Nissan Prairie. Yesterday, as I pondered the diecast custom vans that got away, I wondered: is it possible to get a diecast toy version of my very first car?

Sure enough, it is! Thing is, the toy version costs $49.99 shipped, or exactly one cent less than I paid for my ’69 Corona sedan back in 1982. There’s no way in hell I’m paying that much for a toy version of a car that was so ill-handling, underpowered, and shoddily built that the Toyoda family would be wise to buy every last survivor and crush it, for the sake of what’s left of the company’s good name… well, except for the fact that it’s impossible for a car freak not to love his or her very first car, no matter how terrible. So, how about you? If your first car was a Volkswagen Beetle or Ford Mustang, you’re in good shape. If it was a Matra Bagheera, on the other hand— hey, you’re still covered!

Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Scroggzilla Scroggzilla on Sep 02, 2011

    Sadly, there is no diecast version of the 1983 Ford Tempo in any scale.

  • 4runner4me 4runner4me on Jul 18, 2021

    While it was far from my first vehicle, I'm trying to locate a die cast or other replica model of my 2007 Toyota 4runner. I've searched online for over a year now, and have yet been able to locate one. Any suggestions????

  • Rochester "better than Vinfast" is a pretty low bar.
  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
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