Dinky’s Brinks Truck (275) has been one of my favorite mod­els ever since it was released, both for its accu­ra­cy and its “play val­ue.” As I now know, it also has a unique his­to­ry among Dinky Toys.

Name­ly, Dinky’s Brinks Truck:

• was first issued in 1964, fol­lowed sev­er­al years lat­er by a sub­tly dif­fer­ent pro­mo ver­sion;
• includ­ed acces­sories made by Mec­ca­no France;
• got delet­ed in 1969, then tem­porar­i­ly res­ur­rect­ed as a lim­it­ed-pro­duc­tion Mex­i­can pro­mo in the mid ’70s;
• rejoined the Dinky range in 1979, six­teen years after its debut. The last gasp ver­sion nev­er made it into any cat­a­log, and was paint­ed and assem­bled in Texas.

All this was thanks to the Brink’s Com­pa­ny, known for its bul­let-resis­tant armored trucks for trans­port­ing mon­ey and oth­er valu­ables. Brink’s was found­ed in 1859 and boasts of being one of the old­est com­mer­cial brands in the world. In the U.S., “Brink’s Truck” is often used as a pro­pri­etary eponym for every armored truck, no mat­ter whose name is on them.

Armored trucks make great toys because of their poten­tial for being “robbed.” But it seems that in 1964, no accu­rate diecast mod­el of one bear­ing the Brink’s name had ever been made. (There were some crude pre­de­ces­sors, such as a cast-iron Brink’s truck with a coin slot, and a plas­tic bat­tery-pow­ered Brink’s truck with a remote con­trol.)

Brink’s, which had been acquired in 1959 by Pittston, a trans­porta­tion and min­ing con­glom­er­ate, appar­ent­ly decid­ed it was time for a detailed mod­el — one that, while still a toy, could be pre­sent­ed to bankers and oth­er clients with­out apolo­gies. It agreed to pay Mec­ca­no Ltd. for the tool­ing, also com­mit­ting to pur­chase a large quan­ti­ty of mod­els.

Dis­claimer: No records of this deal exist, but giv­en the exten­sive use Brink’s would make of the result­ing Dinky, it seems irrefutable. Besides, the Brink’s name is cast into the toy’s base­plate, seal­ing the deal and ensur­ing that the mod­el could not be sold with some­one else’s liv­ery. The 275 Brinks Truck was announced in the Decem­ber 1964 issue of the Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine by Chris Jel­ley, who wrote the fol­low­ing:

Before space runs out on me, I must move on to the very last Dinky Toy due to appear in 1964 — the Brink’s Armoured Car (No. 275). Brink’s are a pri­vate secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny who do the same sort of job in Amer­i­ca that a firm such as Securi­cor do in Britain. One of their main duties is to trans­port mon­ey and gold for banks or to car­ry large pay­rolls for indus­tri­al con­cerns, etc. To do this they use strong armoured vans, and it is one of these, made by Gen­er­al Motors, that we have pro­duced in minia­ture.

Fea­tures of the Dinky mod­el embrace open­ing cab and rear doors, inte­ri­or fit­tings, and win­dows. Inside the cab ... are a dri­ver and guard in semi­of­fi­cial uni­form. The vehi­cle is fin­ished in grey, dec­o­rat­ed with authen­tic trans­fers. The wind­screen and win­dows are tint­ed, and the mod­el comes com­plete with two open­ing chests, each con­tain­ing eight ‘gold’ ingots.

A small pic­ture of the pro­to­type truck appeared in the Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine arti­cle. An artist’s ren­di­tion of the Dinky, mean­while, was in an adver­tise­ment on the back cov­er.

The Brinks prototype in the Meccano Magazine.

The Dinky Brinks Truck advertised on the back cover of the Meccano Magazine, December 1964.

Two things are notable in Jel­ley’s write­up. First, he obvi­ous­ly was not sure where to put the apos­tro­phe in Brink’s. Dinky would solve that conun­drum by drop­ping the apos­tro­phe entire­ly on the mod­el’s box­es and all sub­se­quent pub­lic­i­ty! (In this arti­cle, I have fol­lowed their lead, using the apos­tro­phe when refer­ring to the com­pa­ny and omit­ting it when refer­ring to the Dinky itself.)

The sec­ond is his men­tion of Gen­er­al Motors (GMC). The 275 Brinks Truck is a detailed mod­el of a GMC vehi­cle, yet the GMC logo is not present and that com­pa­ny would nev­er again be men­tioned by Mec­ca­no.

It’s pos­si­ble there were licens­ing dif­fi­cul­ties with GMC. Pre­vi­ous­ly in 1961, Mec­ca­no had mod­eled a GMC “Can­non­ball” trac­tor for its 948 Trac­tor-Trail­er McLean, known to have been financed by the truck­ing com­pa­ny. In that case too, the GMC label did not appear on the toy and was nowhere ref­er­enced.

It’s also pos­si­ble that Brink’s sim­ply did­n’t want to share the spot­light with GMC. After all, it did­n’t use only GMC trucks for its armored cars; it also used trucks from Ford and Inter­na­tion­al, as shown below.

Two period Brink’s trucks, GMC (left) and International (right).

In any case, the pro­to­type for Dinky’s armored “car” (as Mec­ca­no first called it) was a 1962 or 1963 GMC medi­um-duty C‑Series, either a 2‑ton 3500 or a 2½-ton 4000 mod­el. It was equipped with a gaso­line-pow­ered V‑6 (304.7 cu. in., 5.0L) offer­ing 165 horse­pow­er, or, option­al­ly a 351.2 cu. in. (5.7L) ver­sion with 180 horse­pow­er.

Every one of those hors­es would have been need­ed to drag the weighty vehi­cle around. Accord­ing to the web­site coachbuilt.com, Brink’s had been the first in the indus­try to rein­force its cars with armor and weapons. Brink’s vehi­cles could be equipped with .38 cal­iber revolvers, .44 cal­iber repeat­ing rifles, 12-gauge shot­guns, gas riot guns, and sub-machine guns.

A GMC Brink’s truck in “The Kidnapping of the President” (1980).

The GMCs were sent in the form of a naked chas­sis with only a front cowl to long­time Brink’s con­trac­tor J. Tom Moore and Sons of Mem­phis, Ten­nessee, where an armored body was fit­ted. Exact details of the armor were kept secret, but might have been revealed years after the fact in a 1980 movie, The Kid­nap­ping of the Pres­i­dent (star­ring Hal Hol­brook and William Shat­ner), where a 1962–66 GMC Brinks Truck not only stars but is blown up for art’s sake.

In the movie, a sup­posed Brink’s offi­cial states that the truck­’s walls were of sand­wich con­struc­tion: a quar­ter inch of steel, an inch of cot­ton bat­ting to stop bul­lets, and then a sec­ond lay­er of steel. Mean­while, the truck­’s floor was said to be two inch­es of sol­id steel.

Brink’s truck armor discussed with William Shatner in “The Kidnapping of the President “(1980).

Brink’s Trucks used to shelter police during 1968 riots in Cleveland.

Return­ing to the Dinky Toy itself, the mod­el was ini­tial­ly released in a Visi-Pac box, priced at 12 shillings 11 pence (65p) in Britain, $2.98 in Cana­da, and $3.98 in the U.S. After a year or two, Mec­ca­no switched to a more-durable pic­ture box, show­ing a Brink’s truck parked in front of a bank in an obvi­ous­ly Amer­i­can set­ting.

The first Brinks Truck in a Visi-Pac box. 

The first Brinks Truck in a picture box. 

The Dinky is a very faith­ful repli­ca, except that both the GMC logo and a piece of trim that ran between the head­lights have been removed. The doors, which were one of the more inten­sive uses of plas­tic in a Dinky to date, are nice­ly mold­ed but tend to flop open.

GMC trim deleted from the Dinky. 

The Brinks Truck’s grille. 

The “gold” crates sup­plied with the mod­el are espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing. Apart from their con­tents, they are iden­ti­cal to the 849 Caiss­es sold as an acces­so­ry by Mec­ca­no France since 1959. (One of these crates, con­tain­ing “radioac­tive mate­r­i­al,” would lat­er be used in the 105 Max­i­mum Secu­ri­ty Vehi­cle too.)

The Brink’s Com­pa­ny like­ly made use of the stan­dard Dinky Toys, but with­in a few years it ordered a spe­cial run of pro­mo ver­sions. Still sup­plied with the two crates, the pro­mos are dif­fer­ent in that the plas­tic doors are now a dark­er grey, the chas­sis is a brighter blue, and the wheels are black.

The promo version of the first Brinks Truck.

A more sub­tle change took place beneath. The rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the exhaust pipe at the truck­’s left rear has for some rea­son been delet­ed. Also at the rear, two square box­es pos­si­bly rep­re­sent­ing chas­sis rein­force­ments have been added. Pre­sum­ably made at Brink’s behest, these tool­ing changes were of course per­ma­nent.

The exhaust pipe (top right) was deleted on the second version (bottom) for an unknown reason.

Brink’s gave its pro­mo ver­sions to employ­ees — I pur­chased my sam­ple on eBay from a retired Brinks guard — and prospec­tive clients. It appears that most came in the stan­dard pic­ture box.

Tires and wheels on the first Brinks Truck (left) and the promo version (right).

I have nev­er seen a def­i­nite date for this first pro­mo ver­sion, but it always sports the plas­tic tires labeled Heavy Duty that start­ed appear­ing on Dinkys around 1968, so it can­not be ear­li­er. Mean­while, the stan­dard ver­sion appeared in a cat­a­log for the last time in 1969. How­ev­er, that was far from the end of the mod­el!

In approx­i­mate­ly 1976 (no def­i­nite date is doc­u­ment­ed), a lim­it­ed quan­ti­ty of Dinky trucks was ordered from Liv­er­pool by a Mex­i­can com­pa­ny, Ser­vi­cio Pan Amer­i­cano de Pro­tec­cion (SPP).  At the time, Brink’s owned a 21% stake in SPP; it acquired the rest of that com­pa­ny in 2010.

Sup­plied in an unmarked white box, the Pan Amer­i­cano Dinky is fin­ished in a dark­er all-over grey with a black base, and no longer includes the crates or fig­ures of pre­vi­ous ver­sions. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the plas­tic tires almost always have glued them­selves to the plas­tic wheels via a messy chem­i­cal reac­tion.

The Pan Americano version.

Inci­den­tal­ly some price guides refer to the Pan Amer­i­cano Dinky as the “Luis R. Pica­so Man­riquez” truck. This is a mis­con­cep­tion picked up from a pho­to that appeared in Mike and Sue Richard­son’s his­to­ry of Dinky Toys. In fact, Sr. Man­riquez was a Pan Amer­i­cano offi­cial who might have been respon­si­ble for order­ing the Dinky.  About 20 years ago, I was lucky enough to pur­chase two of the mod­els direct­ly from a for­mer assis­tant of his.

These mod­els always sport the fly­ing horse logo of Pan Amer­i­cano, but a num­ber have turned up in UK auc­tions with­out the com­pa­ny name decals. I’m guess­ing these sam­ples “leaked” to col­lec­tors from Binns Road direct­ly, and that the oth­ers got dec­o­rat­ed with the fid­dly name decals in Mex­i­co.

This photo in the Richardsons book led to naming confusion. It shows a sample of the Pan Americano truck without its company name decals.

The end of the sto­ry came in 1979, when Brink’s had obvi­ous­ly run out of its stocks of the Dinky truck and want­ed more. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Binns Road — soon to be closed — was in dis­ar­ray. They were hav­ing trou­ble meet­ing demand for the Dinkys that retail­ers had already ordered. There was lit­tle time for pro­duc­tion of a “zom­bie” mod­el that the Amer­i­cans want­ed. What to do?

Accord­ing to both con­tem­po­rary accounts and rec­ol­lec­tions on web­sites devot­ed to plas­tic kits, Mec­ca­no own­er Air­fix had made a series of increas­ing invest­ments in AVA Inter­na­tion­al, its U.S. dis­trib­u­tor. Some time in 1979, AVA’s name was changed to USAir­fix. Since the main busi­ness of Air­fix was plas­tic kits, tool­ing was import­ed from Eng­land and sent to an injec­tion-mold­ing facil­i­ty in Dal­las. Import­ed kits were also placed into larg­er U.S.-specific box­es “for greater shelf appeal.”

The Amer­i­cans were appar­ent­ly not set up for die cast­ing, so when the order came for a “repop” of the Brinks Truck, there was only one solu­tion. Cast the mod­el at Binns Road, then send the naked parts to Texas for paint­ing, assem­bly, and pack­ag­ing. (The same was also done with Dinky’s pock­et-size Star Trek mod­els, the 802 Klin­gon Cruis­er and 803 Enter­prise.)

The fin­ish on the U.S. Brinks Truck has been crit­i­cized (it is even worse on the 802 and 803) but the mod­el did have one improve­ment com­pared to the Pan Amer­i­cano ver­sion: met­al wheels which no longer react with the tires. The fin­ish is now gray for the body and doors, blue for the chas­sis, and white for the roof. The roof col­or is not suf­fi­cient­ly dis­tinct from the body and stands out only in the most sym­pa­thet­ic light. Hard­ly worth the trou­ble.

The U.S.-assembled Brinks Truck.

The Brink’s labels are sim­i­lar to before, but unfor­tu­nate­ly they are now stick­ers rather than decals. Binns Road could not or would not alter the cast­ing, so the ribs on the sides of the truck that had helped line up decals now meant that the stick­ers don’t stay in place. With its injec­tion-mold­ing capa­bil­i­ties, USAir­fix did remove ribs from the plas­tic doors in order to accom­mo­date a larg­er Brink’s label, but these don’t adhere well either.

Wheels on the Pan Americano truck (left) compared to those on the final U.S. version (right).

For years, I thought U.S. assem­bly of the final 275 Brinks Truck had to be a myth, because the mod­el is so com­mon­ly found on U.K. auc­tion sites. But now I know that not only was it U.S.-finished, it was also (re)imported and sold in Britain. In those inno­cent days before bar codes, the unal­tered Amer­i­can pack­ag­ing was employed, com­plete with AVA and USAir­fix men­tions on the back.

The U.S.-assembled Brinks Truck came in a hanging window box (left) that mentioned both AVA and USAirfix on the back (right).

The ver­sions sup­plied to Brink’s were no dif­fer­ent from those sold in stores, but Brink’s print­ed its own box, fea­tur­ing a lift-off lid and a Brink’s logo. Par­tic­u­lar­ly favored cus­tomers also received a set of brand­ed cuf­flinks and a book called “The Mon­ey Movers” which had first been pub­lished in 1959.

Brink’s gave out the final version in a white box with lift-off lid. 

Hav­ing Brinks Truck cast­ings cross the Atlantic twice seems an inef­fi­cient way of doing busi­ness. But in that fraught year of 1979, Air­fix also exper­i­ment­ed by hav­ing the 180 Rover 3500 and 219 Big Cat Jaguar made in Hong Kong, and the 122 Vol­vo Estate and 361 Mis­sile Fir­ing War Char­i­ot made in Italy.

Any­how, U.K. pur­chasers of the Brinks Truck helped defray ship­ping costs. When I queried sev­er­al Face­book groups devot­ed to Dinky Toys, two dif­fer­ent users recalled pay­ing £5 apiece for the trucks at their local toy shops. That was a high price for a Dinky at the time. The well-known toy store Ham­ley’s of Lon­don charged even more: £7.25!

Hamley’s marked the final Brink Truck up to £7.25.

Today, the final ver­sion of the Brinks Truck is easy to find from both U.S. and U.K. sell­ers for around $50. In 1983, one could have got­ten one for free by writ­ing Brink’s, which the first image below can attest to!

Brink’s still had Dinky trucks in stock in 1983.

All four Dinky Brinks Trucks.

Only the first two Brinks Trucks had painted taillights.

Acknowledgement

Many sources con­tributed bits of infor­ma­tion to this arti­cle. They include 6066gmcguy.com, Coachbuilt.com, Row­land Hill, Peter Hinks, Partholan Joyce-Fen­lon, Qual­i­ty Diecast Toys (QDT), Nigel Robertshaw, Mark Simiele, Vec­tis Auc­tions, Andy Wake­ford, and Mark Wood­ford.