By Fabrizio Panico
Text and photographs copyright of the Author(s) unless otherwise stated.
The end of the partwork (parts #43 to #50)
Lockdown is worsening in Europe, but apparently not in China. The Mercury partwork has carried on being issued, though with nothing else other than plain re-colouring. The two weeks delay, suffered during the summer season, was not recovered.
Since my last article eight more models have been added to the collection sold in Italy by Hachette, completing the partwork as expected. All in all a partly disappointing partwork. After many interesting moulds Hachette switched to a stingy regimen of plain re-use of those same moulds. In response many collectors decided not to complete the partwork. A shame, because fidelity to the original models was really high, and the colourful small boxes added a remarkable feeling to the models, but we can only hope that in the future someone else will propose a new partwork with at least a fraction of the missing models.
Hachette #43 is the Alfa Romeo Giulietta TI, a 1:48 scale model (Mercury #20 from 1961), with white paint, suspension, windows and grey interiors. Already seen a few months ago as #37 in a green livery with red interiors. It has the same box as #37. It looks like a picture of the real car superimposed on a simple drawing of the background.
Hachette #44 is the Autobianchi Bianchina Panoramica, a 1:48 scale model (Mercury #10 from 1961), in a dull light green livery, with red seats, but no steering wheel. Already seen some months ago as #35 in a red livery with white seats. Another disappointing re-colour.
Hachette #45 is the Fiat 1800 saloon, a 1:48 scale model (Mercury #2 from 1959), in a light grey monochrome finish. Already seen a year ago as #28 in a much nicer light blue livery with a black roof and white interiors. As already said the Mercury model was released at the same time of the real one, at first with windows and a two-tone finish, then adding interiors, later on with suspension, and in 1961 also in a monochrome finish (like the present release). At the same time the model’s box was modified, both colours and pictures, the second version is correctly used by Hachette.
Hachette #46 is the Fiat 1500 spyder, a 1:48 scale model (Mercury no. 7 from 1960), in a light blue livery, with red interiors. Already seen almost a year ago as #31 in a quite dull light green livery with white interiors. The only other difference is in the wheels, a small detail change.
Hachette #47 is the Innocenti 950 Spider, a 1:48 scale model (Mercury #10 from 1961), in a red livery with light blue seats. Already seen a few months ago as #38 in light blue, with red seats.
Hachette #48 is the Viberti BC5 tanker, a 1:76 scale model (Mercury #96) from 1953, already seen in the Aquila’s blue and white livery (Hachette #24), in the Petrolea’s red livery (Hachette #30), and in the matt olive green livery of the military version (Hachette #41). Now it sports the red livery of PetrolCaltex, the Italian name of the Caltex oil brand, founded in 1936 as the California Texas Oil Company, through a joint venture between the Texas Company (later called Texaco) and Standard Oil of California (later called Chevron). From 1947 the Caltex brand replaced the Texaco brand in Europe, while in Italy it was present as Petrol Caltex. In 1967 operations in Europe ceased and the network was split between Chevron and Texaco.
Hachette #49 is the Fiat nuova 1100, a 1:48 scale model (Mercury #13) from the end of 1954, already seen some time ago as #36 in a blue livery, now in white, only a simple re-colour.
Hachette #50 is the Volkswagen 1200, a 1:48 scale model (Mercury no. 15) from 1955, in a blue livery and chromed baseplate, and already seen in red as #16 and in the yellow and black livery of the Swiss Post as #6.
Editor’s note: We would like to thank Fabrizio for his painstaking coverage of this Hachette partwork which certainly included some nice replica models even if Hachette rather disappointed collectors by the number of re-used castings at the end of the series.
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