In the Feb­ru­ary 1961 issue of Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine, col­lec­tors were treat­ed to an excit­ing full-col­or announce­ment. A brand new Dinky Toys mod­el was hit­ting the shelves: No. 186, the Mer­cedes 220 SE. Set against the back­drop of a majes­tic Bavar­i­an cas­tle, the minia­ture mar­vel made quite the entrance.

In the UK, this styl­ish 4 inch lim­ou­sine could be yours for just 5 shillings and 9 pence. True to the real car’s ele­gance, the mod­el fea­tured the icon­ic three-point­ed Mer­cedes star on the radi­a­tor, flanked by large head­light units built into the plas­tic front fend­er and of course chrome-plat­ed for extra flair. Over time, many of these del­i­cate stars snapped off as the plas­tic grew brit­tle with age.

Image: Wikipedia

A fun fact: the three points of the Mer­cedes star sym­bol­ize the brand’s ambi­tion to dom­i­nate on land, sea, and the air — a nod to its pow­er­ful engines used in cars, marine ves­sels and air­craft.

While Mer­cedes fans knew the real life 220 SE as the “Fintail”(or Heck­flosse in Ger­man), its offi­cial fac­to­ry code was W111. Dinky’s scaled down ver­sion stayed true to the orig­i­nal spir­it, requir­ing no few­er than 17 indi­vid­ual parts to assem­ble a com­plete mod­el.

Here’s what went into build­ing (and restor­ing) one of these lit­tle leg­ends:

• Base plate – cleaned, straight­ened, and fresh­ly repaint­ed
• Sus­pen­sion spring – de-rust­ed, realigned, and lubri­cat­ed
• Mount­ing riv­et for the spring
• 4 tires – replaced with new ones
• 4 pol­ished hubs and 2 axles, all cleaned and gleam­ing
• Car body – stripped, pol­ished, degreased, primed, col­or coat­ed, and clear lac­quered
• Plas­tic win­dows – pol­ished until crys­tal clear
• Inte­ri­or and steer­ing wheel – cleaned
• Front fend­er – met­al ver­sion fit­ted after care­ful trim­ming
• Rear fend­er – new chrome piece installed

To bring every­thing togeth­er, the orig­i­nal riv­et holes were drilled and new riv­ets were secure­ly clamped in place. To ensure a per­fect fin­ish, every piece was test fit­ted before paint­ing.

Some Mercedes 220 SE (W111) Trivia

• Pro­duced from 1959 to 1965 in:
  • Stuttgart, West Ger­many
  • East Lon­don, South Africa
  • Port Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia
  
• Dinky Toys man­u­fac­tured their mod­el from 1961 to 1966 in:
  • Liv­er­pool, Eng­land
  • Cape Town, South Africa

When South Africa left the Com­mon­wealth, import tax­es on ful­ly assem­bled toys sky­rock­et­ed. To get around this, Dinky shipped unpaint­ed parts to Arthur E. Har­ris, their South African dis­trib­u­tor. There, the mod­els were paint­ed and assem­bled local­ly. South African box­es proud­ly stat­ed “Print­ed in South Africa” and includ­ed Afrikaans text along with the mark “Sole Dis­trib­u­tor: Arthur E. Har­ris (Pty) Ltd.”

As for my own two 220 SE mod­els,  I restored them in two of the most pop­u­lar orig­i­nal col­ors from the era, clas­sic black and sleek grey, and made two box­es for the lim­ou­sines. One for Euro­pean mar­ket and the oth­er as sim­i­lar as the South African ver­sion, hold­ing South African text on it. For me that’s easy to read and under­stand because it’s very sim­i­lar to my native Dutch.