As recounted in my recent post on the elusive The East Glows, I’ve been on the hunt for a genuine Chinese CC for decades. And then there I was, working in my front yard, when a sparkle of light down the street caught the corner of my eye. I turned towards it and was dazzled by the biggest chrome grille this side of a Hong Qi Red Flag. As it rolled by closer, I racked my memory banks trying to identify the big red convertible…What the…it can’t be..it’s…a…
POC! A genuine Chinese mid-seventies POC! I’ve had an inexplicable compulsion about finding a Chinese car (no, a Zap doesn’t count) for decades; it’s been a Niedermeyer family obsession since I sincerely offered my kids $20,000 if they could find an The East Glows (with Chinese license plates) to keep them busy on road trips.
And here is something even much more grandiose than that pathetic Chinese Studebaker knock off. As it approached, I grabbed my camera, ran into the street, and waved it at them. They barely acknowledged me, slowing down just enough to mutter something about taking pictures of all the cheap Oregonian real estate they were going to buy, before they regally rolled on by…
Ok, enough of that. But I have had an obsession with Chinese cars for decades, wondering if there are any Curbside Classics to be found there. Gushing Chinese car sales reports just don’t do it for me; I want to see interesting old Chinese cars; there must be some somewhere. And then the light goes off…I’ve had one for decades! I just forgot.
A friend had a toy store thirty years ago, and she used to share her interest in off-beat toys with me. And the queen of the fleet is this Photoing On Car, safely ensconced in its box deep in the bowels of my office closet. The big question…will it still work after all these decades? Chinese goods do have a reputation. One way to find out…after a run to the store for some fresh D-cells.
Success! Time for a video to document the “Mystery Action”, “Horn Sounding”, and “The Girl Taking Photo When It Stops”. Who says the Chinese can’t build things that last? This POC is close to forty years old! The only minor issue to deal with was that the lovely lady photographer’s head was tilted skyward, perhaps her bushy red ponytail’s gravitational pull after all these years was to blame. A little ball of sticky caulk-rope did the trick.
But don’t think I wasn’t worried, because when this car was first gifted to me, it came with some cheap Chinese old-school (non-alkaline) batteries. After taking it out for some initial spins, I proudly put it on a shelf. Months later, I noticed ooze puddling up underneath it. The batteries had leaked and created a corrosive spill. My precious POC needed a careful cleaning and emery cloth treatment, but the paint on the bottom and in the battery compartment peeled away like an old sunburn. I was deeply anxious that the damage might be mortal.
No worries; that rather Western-looking dude can still spin the POC’s steering wheel as madly as ever, thanks to one of the earliest applications of electric power steering.
They make quite a dashing couple, don’t you think, but they do have a decidedly non-Chinese aspect to them. Who says the Chinese don’t know how to tailor their cars for Western consumption?
I’m rather curious as to when this toy first went into production, because that red-haired vixen in my car has had a substantial make-over from the very prim and modest co-pilot represented on the box.
Well, strictly speaking, that applies to the dashing driver too, but I was too distracted by that flame of red hair and the come-hither look in her eyes. Nice hand painting on those eyes and lashes. And what did the women who made these cars make back in the day? Don’t ask.
Equal time time: this guy has also had a make-over since he posed for the box. Oddly, he looks like he went back in time though; his hairdo on the box is rather contemporary, no? But I do like his hand-painted shirt collar, buttons and pocket. Nice.
China was just the latest country to take up the baton of generating foreign currency by making and exporting tin toys. It started in Germany, of course, the Vaterland of the genre. The German tradition goes back quite far, and boomed in the late nineteenth century. Don’t get me started on tin toys; we’ll have to do a whole story on them. But here’s a German Distler of the early automotive era.
Like so many other German specialties (cameras, etc), the Japanese took over after the war with their lower costs on the labor intensive production of tin toys. Here’s a trio from the classic Japanese fifties era.I suspect that Taiwan had a crack at it too, but China got in the game pretty quickly as Japanese labor costs soared in the late sixties and seventies.
There’s no doubt about the provenance of this car, not that it wasn’t obvious. Interestingly, this car clearly isn’t a copy of a real car, unless my family has been too polite about my dementia. So somewhere in China, someone sat down and actually designed this car; interesting parting thought.
With that brilliant insight, let’s wave our handsome and apparently happy couple farewell. They have lots of ground to cover before their investment portfolio is fully committed. But I do have other toys in the closet…
[thanks Marta, for indulging my love of tin cars and toys]
Related reading:
In Search of The East Glows – And Actual Chinese Curbside Classics
I have one. Love it.
Brilliant.Thank you for the insights.
I have one with the chinese writing on the box, a chinese couple, no long red hair, and I bought it over 30 years ago and seems to be the first one they made before the box was
made in english that I first started seeing as reproductions as yours is. I really like the original that worked much better than this video but your photographs of this car riding on a real paved road are killer, I love them !!~
The Chinese may be capable of making good quality products, but I’d still prefer North American workers building that product. Whether it’s the USA or Canada, we need jobs just as much as other countries do.
Jeeze ~ this brings back some memories , my Son was born in 1979 and some time after I bought one of these at the long defunct Azusa Swap Meet ~ IIRC is was fairly $pendy @ $10 +/- .
In ours , the girl turned 90° out before raising her camera then the light blinked on for a moment .
The lettering on that box you have , looks far more modern than the lettering was on my box .
-Nate
Watch the video; she’ll do it for you several times.
I did , she turns nowhere near 90° .
-Nate
Hey, she’s getting old.I don’t turn so easily anymore either 🙂
Is it just me, or does it look like the girl goes to the same hairdresser as Kim Jong Il?
Oops…make that Kim Jong Un.
In between Japan and China, there was Hong Kong, where my 1963 Cadillac Sixty-Two convertible was made. It’s actually a radio (no Signal-Seeking, though).
Wonderful! Shows that the current Chinese love of Buicking goes back quite a ways! Plus the expected Marxist love of Packarding.
The styling echoes what Mitsuoka would attach to an innocent Nissan Sentra and wheel out into public view,
More like paparazzi on car! 😛
I do love a four-door convertible! The semi-freestanding chrome headlamps flowing into the fenders are an interesting touch…
Speaking of makeovers, nobody else noticed the ’70s neoclassic Brougham grille stuck on a 20-years-older body style?
For an inexpensive tin toy, that thing is surprisingly stylish.
I want one! Oh, and I’ll take the red-head too, if we can pry that dude out of the driver’s seat.
Let’s try this globalization logic on for size…
A car is manufactured in the USA by a Japanese-owned company is considered to be a Japanese car.
THEREFORE:
A car manufactured in Sweden by a Chinese-owned company must be a Chinese car.
So if you want to photograph Chinese cars, just head down to your local Volvo dealer!
http://www.sheppardvolvo.com/index.htm
A car manufactured in Sweden by a Chinese-owned company must be a Chinese car.
Why not? My “buy American” coworker justified his Saab with “all the money goes to GM”
Actually, in any production, the income is distributed into raw material costs, factory and loan costs, wages, and then finally profits, which make their way to the manufacturer’s shareholders (Capitalists) after tax. So a true “American” car has to be built entirely in the USA, using domestic materials, by USAmerican workers, and by a US Corporation. A Swedish-built Saab is hardly American as ALL the money does not go to GM. Raw material cost, factory cost, and wages all go to Swedes, while only the post-tax profits accrue to GM USA shareholders. It is a “3/4 Swedish” car if you will, just as Swedish-built Volvo is actually “3/4 Swedish” now.
As for Japanese cars, the “Japanese” cars in USA are similarly only 1/4 Japanese, the rest being USA or Mexican input. Multinational corporations are really just that—multi-national!
Actually, in any production, the income is distributed into
Everything you say is correct and logical. But I live near Detroit and the “buy American” fanatics have to come to terms with the large amount of foreign parts in their “American” cars. They grasped on the idea that “all the money” is the tiny portion that actually goes into the hands of the honchos in the RenCen, Dearborn or Auburn Hills, and that is all that counts.
The guy with the Saab was the company CFO. Another one, who was cheering when Toyota had it’s unintended acceleration issues, insisted her Mexican built, 30% North American content, Ford Fusion was American, because “all the money” went to Dearborn. In their eyes, an Ohio built Honda, with 70% North American content, is foreign, because “all the money” goes to Japan.
It wasn’t worth my bother to try and point out the flaws in their logic, because they were so bought in to that meme.
At first, I thought the subject vehicle was one of those electric kiddie cars, and I was going to reminisce about my pedal powered fire engine.
Ah, tin, toy car. I had those too. Most of the ones I had had a flywheel inside. I’d push the car along the floor a couple times to spin up the flywheel, then let it run under it’s own power.
I love the term “Mystery Action” on the box, that just made me laugh and laugh.
That reminds me of one of those old German made Schuco tin wind up cars. I found one at a garage sale many years ago, it contained a Thorens wind up music box that played “Mary Had a Little Lamb” very, very slowly. The car obviously was played with, and left outdoors since it was very chipped and rusty. But it still ran forward and backwards, but slowly! I attempted to restore it years ago, but it just ended up in one of my “to do later” plastic bins up in the attic.
I just bought one today at an estate sale for $20 in pretty much perfect condition even the box is barely blemished, I see on ebay one the same as mine listed for $399.00 but several others from around thirty five dollars on up to a hundred and one for I believe $175ish. Anyone know why the wild variation on prices??