I orig­i­nal­ly wrote about the entire Dinky Toys 40 series in 2019, includ­ing the 40e Stan­dard Van­guard.

Dinky Toys were quite accu­rate mod­els of real vehi­cles pro­duced at that time, but over the years, some of the real vehi­cles under­went sig­nif­i­cant changes to their appear­ance. Not always, but some­times Mec­ca­no noticed these changes, and decid­ed that they need­ed to mod­i­fy a Dinky Toys mod­el, to make it more accu­rate and rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

A case in point is the Eng­lish made 40e/153 Stan­dard Van­guard Saloon. When this was first intro­duced in 1948, it appeared with open rear wheel arch­es, which mir­rored the real car at that time. How­ev­er, by 1950, the real car now came with closed arch­es or skirts as some call them. So Mec­ca­no went to all the trou­ble to mod­i­fy the die and change the cat­a­log and box images to con­form.

When the 40e Stan­dard Van­guard was updat­ed in 1950, both the rear wheel spats were added and the rear axle clip delet­ed, which also result­ed in a new­er style base­plate. In 1954, the num­ber­ing was changed to 153, and the mod­el was pro­duced through 1959, then delet­ed from the range.

Here’s a pho­to show­ing the two very dif­fer­ent base­plates used on the Stan­dard Van­guard. The one on the left, with that unique axle clip was only used briefly, then replaced by a nor­mal base­plate, but with small­er let­ter­ing. The oth­er base­plate on the right is a lat­er one, with large let­ter­ing.

That unique clip was also used on two French Dinky Toys, around the same time: The 24q Ford Vedette and the 29e Isobloc Auto­bus front axle. This was a rather com­plex piece to both make and install, so one has to won­der what the advan­tage would have been. Appar­ent­ly that also became clear to Mec­ca­no, as its use on the Stan­dard Van­guard only last­ed about a year.

Isobloc front end

I’ve nev­er seen any­thing offi­cial from either fac­to­ry on why it was used or sup­posed to accom­plish, so we are left with anoth­er “Mec­ca­no mys­tery”!