Tour de France Promos

[starni999]

Hi all,

I always loved these, and finally got my first for my 40th birthday, the PR Savon ambre le chat van, the Watermans ink van followed a few years later, also by PR, and finally for my 50th I got the Byrrh barrel lorry by Les Routiers.

The PR vans were remade by Atlas / Norev a few years ago, but were nowhere near as nice as these originals, they were listed by Norev as CIJ prototypes, but I have never seen any evidence that CIJ, JRD, or anyone else made them, Cecil Gibson said they were made by PR, so that's good enough for me.

The Byrrh is from a small series that contains another Tour promo, the Vitabrill tube lorry, so that's on the list for my 60th!











Cheers
Chris Warr.

PS, The Watermans and PR photos aren't mine, but the models are, they're from the auction house listings, sadly I lost my photos of these in a PC crash, and I don't like to get them out as they are in airtight boxes.

PPS....Found the pictures!!

[matchboxmarcel]

I like these !, never seen before.
thanks for posting

marcel

[karl]

I love those old guys - I saw the 2 PR promo trucks in Cecil Gibson's book also 35 years ago and finally bought the 2 about 10 years ago! Thanks for the post- brings back memories...

[starni999]

Hi Karl,
Have you still got them? I'd love to see a picture.
In the pre internet '70's all we had were those thin books, I spent hours and hours with Cecil Gibson, and learned pretty much everything I needed to know from him and Mike and Sue Richardson. By the time I was 10 in 1974 I had learned all the Dinky number / letter combinations, I would study and test myself like an exam! I never really thought I would ever be able to own models like these, I had never seen or heard of them at UK swop meets. Happy, and more innocent times.
Chris Warr.

[karl]

These two are sitting on my Misc. shelf. Some Vilmer, Corgi, other promos, Here is a poor mobile photo (cell phone photo).

[starni999]

Brilliant! Great to see them, cheers Karl.
CW.

[Idris]

Interesting news article here.

[starni999]

Fantastic!
There are some there that would make incredible models, in fact they all would, but I suppose the tooling costs for a one off livery would make them unlikely.
There are still a couple of original 50's - 60's Tour promos I want, the Les Roulliers / Routiers "Vitabrill" and the yellow Peugeot D4A "broom" van that like the PR models has no makers name. Sadly the former costs about £500.00, and I've only ever seen pictures of the latter, so that space in the cabinet remains empty!
Chris Warr.

[GHOSTHUNTER]

Thank's Hugh for the link to those vehicles and we thought our own 'Terry's Chocolate Orange' car was way out!

Ghosty.