Some­times a mod­el arrives on the work­bench and you instant­ly know: this one’s going to be a chal­lenge. That was exact­ly the case with the Dinky 33C/570 Sim­ca Miroiti­er Car­go.

The lit­tle truck looked pret­ty mis­er­able when it came in. The flatbed was detached, the spare wheel miss­ing, the tires crum­bled, and worst of all, the glass rack was bad­ly dam­aged. Bro­ken, bent out of shape, and the adver­tis­ing sign com­plete­ly miss­ing. And yet, the truck hadn’t lost its charm. That’s what made it so appeal­ing. Not a flaw­less restora­tion, but a true res­cue mis­sion.

Here’s what I did:

• The glass rack was straight­ened, aligned, and firm­ly sol­dered back togeth­er.
• A new adver­tis­ing board was made, neat­ly fit­ted into its slots and giv­en a fresh coat of paint.
• The icon­ic let­ter­ing “Miroiti­er / Saint-Gob­ain” was designed in a vec­tor pro­gram and applied to the board.
• Two plas­tic glass panes were added, com­plete with “Frag­ile” stick­ers, because let’s face it — a glass truck with­out glass just doesn’t make sense.
• Final­ly, new tires were fit­ted and the flatbed with spare wheel was reat­tached to the chas­sis.

The result: a Sim­ca Miroiti­er Car­go that proud­ly shows its his­to­ry, while stand­ing tall on its wheels once again. Not a pris­tine show­room piece, but a liv­ing frag­ment of toy his­to­ry. And that leads us to the ques­tion: what’s the real sto­ry behind the Sim­ca Car­go and its con­nec­tion to Dinky Toys?

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Dinky 33 Simca Cargo

The Dinky 33 Sim­ca Car­go is one of the most rec­og­niz­able French Dinky Toys from the 1950s. The mod­el was based on the real Sim­ca Car­go, a light truck pro­duced in France between 1955 and 1956. Dinky Toys France released sev­er­al ver­sions, includ­ing a flatbed, a tanker, and a fire engine.

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The Special Saint-Gobain Version

The most pop­u­lar ver­sion is the Sim­ca Car­go “Miroiti­er Saint-Gob­ain” (No. 33). This glass trans­port truck appeared in the mid-1950s and fea­tured a met­al rack on the bed for minia­ture glass panes, com­plete with the “Saint-Gob­ain” let­ter­ing, refer­ring to the famous French glass man­u­fac­tur­er. This detail made the toy more than just a truck – it became a minia­ture piece of French indus­tri­al his­to­ry.

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The Original: the Real Simca Cargo

The toy was mod­eled after the Ford Sim­ca Unic Car­go, designed in 1948 and first shown at the Paris Motor Show in 1949. Over the years, the truck was mar­ket­ed under dif­fer­ent names.

• Ford Car­go (1950–1955)
• Sim­ca Car­go (1955–1956)
• Unic Car­go civ­il (1956–1960)

The real truck was pow­ered by a strong 100 hp V8 engine and was lat­er offered in diesel and 4x4 mil­i­tary ver­sions, notably used by the French Army in Alge­ria. Pro­duc­tion shift­ed sev­er­al times, from Pois­sy to the Unic fac­to­ry in Puteaux, with engines even sup­plied by the old Bugat­ti plant in Mol­sheim.

Between 1950 and 1966, thou­sands of these trucks — both civil­ian and mil­i­tary — were built, mak­ing the Sim­ca Car­go an impor­tant sym­bol of France’s post­war auto­mo­tive indus­try.

The abbre­vi­a­tion SIMCA stands for Société Indus­trielle de Mécanique et de Car­rosserie Auto­mo­bile, a French car fac­to­ry found­ed in Nan­terre in 1934 by Hen­ri Pigozzi.