The compiler of  The (New) Cadillac Database© sees two major advantages to collecting Cadillacs and LaSalles in miniuature:  (a) they require no maintenance and (b) they take up very little room.  In Switzerland, where he lived and worked for many years, garage space comes at a premium; usually these are just large enough for a single VW "bug" plus (at a push) a bicycle.   Toys, therefore, must be accommodated inside the house or apartment.

He got his first Cadillac toy on the occasion of  his 24th birthday, in May 1963.   It was a kit car in the Jo-Han "Gold Cup" series, depicting the fabulous 1930 Fleetwood town brougham, style 4264B with canework applied to the lower rear body.   All told, Cadillac built only three of this particular Fleetwod design ...and Yann had one - albeit in miniature - on a bookshelf in the living room.  He recalls building it painstakingly and being relatively pleased with the result.  Fortunately his skills improved as new models gradually were added to what was to become - in the space of twenty years - the largest single collection in the world of  Cadillac toys, scale models and replicas (today he knows of only one other collection that outnumbers it).

Among the members of  The Miniature Auto Club of Geneva, that numbered about twenty souls in the late sixties but grew ten-fold by the mid-eighties, Yann's passion for these scaled-down copies of the "cars in his dreams" soon earned him the nickname, "MrCadillac".  It has stuck with him ever since.

One of the club members, Dr. Michel Sordet of Geneva, introduced him in the early seventies to René Daffaure, a young and skilled amateur model-builder from the town of  Marmande in SW France.  René could "create", in a couple of hours - from balsa wood, bits of plastic and button wheels from cheap toys - a very good looking, scaled-down replica of any Cadillac model of which Yann could supply him with a photograph or magazine ad.  Many of the toys in the collection [about 20% of them] were commissioned from René. They included scale replicas of many Cadillac concept vehicles, prototypes, show cars and unique custom models not otherwise available in toy stores or  hobby shops. There is nothing quite like a Daffaure scale-model auto!  They are crude compared to professional diecast or resin models of  the last decade, yet they have an indefinable charm and definite collector appeal.  They are "objets d'art" ...and are fetching big bucks today among the world's most discerning toy collectors.

The Daffaure's were the cutest toys in the collection; these are known also as "Marmande" or "RD" models.  The most authentic replicas, on the other hand, were the promotional and kit-cars put out by AMT, Aurora, JoHan, Monogram, Processed Plastics and Revell.  The cheapest toys - which subsequently became the most expensive - were those made of  lithographed tin in post-WW2 Japan.  Many of the latter were cheaply imitated in Korea, and more recently in China.  Today, an authentic Japanaese tin toy of the early fifties may command a price in excess of $2000, whereas the cheap Chinese equivalent - weighing in at one third of the original and only looking good from across the room - may be acquired for $5-10.

The size of the toys in the collection ranged  from 1 inch to about 3 feet.   The majority of them fit into one or other of the following traditional scales: 1/8th, 1/12th, 1/16th, 1/18th, 1/20th [many tin toys were built in these five scales], 1/24th & 1/25th [the latter two comprised many promotional models and kit cars] 1/32nd [many kits also], 1/43rd [the most popular scale which fit in with the "O" gauge model railroads], 1/48th, 1/66th and 1/87th [the latter also fit in with "OO" gauge model railroads].

Yann was not your ordinary toy Cadillac collector;  he would spare no effort to make each toy ressemble more closely the full-sized model it was intended to depict.   In doing so, he suffered the sarcasm of the purists and empty-box collectors, who contend that a tampered toy was worth less or even worthless.  Like Liberace, Yann laughed all the way to the bank.  Indeed, following a string of job-related events, changing priorities ...and a nasty motor-cycle accident in 1987, he decided in the late eighties to sell the collection.  He found a buyer for the entire collection and maintains constant contact with the new owner, trying also to visit the growing collection regularly to keep check on the progess.

It was in tended to describe here only the 750-odd pieces that comprised Yann's former collection. However, in view of the constant arrival of new modesl on the market, it has been decided to simply list the models chronologically by model year represented.   Owing to space constraints it won't be possible to show all the toys but we will try to describe them in sufficient detail so that an image won't always be necessary.

In conclusion, the author is counting on toy collectors and users of The (New) Cadillac Database© to point out any mistakes, fill in blanks and generally keep the list up to date for the benefit of all toy collectors.

Glen Houlton, to whom I am deeply indebted, was kind enough to volunteer to prepare the Web page that contains the current draft list of toys in my former collection; you may consult it at the following URL:

http://www.planeteldorado.com/toys

 

Gradually I will re-model these pages and inegrate them into The (New) Cadillac Database©. Also, as stated above, I shall break down the list into more manageable sections and will try to include some images of the best-looking or most interesting Cadillac toys.  Already, Glen has broken down the list into the following sections:

Part 1: The Cadillac Toy Collection

1903 1907 1908
1922 1923 1925 1928
1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939
1940 1941 1942 1946 1947 1948 1949
1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959
1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969
1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979
1980 1982 1984 1985 1986 1987


Part 2: Known Toys Missing from the collection

1903 1907 1909 1910 1913
1930 1938
1940
1950 1952 1954 1956 1957 1959
1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967
1971 1973 1975 1976 1980


Part 3: Toys issued since 1989 (list under construction)

1933 1941 1947 1948 1949
1950 1951 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959
1960 1961 1962 1966 1968 1969
1970 1971 1972 1973 1975 1976 1978
1980 1984 1990 1996


Part 4: La Salle Toys, Scale-Models and Replicas

1935 1937 1938 1940

 

Abbr.

AMB
AWP
BRG
BTL
CON
CPE
DCP
HRS
LAN
LIM
PDW
PHA
RBT
RDS
SED
SPP
STW
TON
TNC
VAN

ASI
AUR
AVO
BAN
BAT
BRL
CHE
DAI
DAN
FAC
ELE
ENT
GUI
HOT
HUB
HUD
ITC
ITL
JOH
LAP
LIN
LUS
MAR
MAT
MER
MES
MET
MID
MON
MPC
MTN
NAC
PAL
PPC
PRE
PRV
PYR
RAL
RDM
REN
REV
REX
RIO
SOL
SSS
TKM
TM
TOT
TOY
VER
YAM
YAT
TRM
VF
(unk)
WES
WYA

BNK
BOT
COL
KIT
TOY