Maybe you just dream of owning a fleet of street cars. You can have your BMW, Porsche, Lamborghini, and Ferrari in several colors if you wish. As you close your eyes you can almost hear the whine of the engines as you maneuver a winding forest road. You can be beside the ocean on a narrow two lane highway that looks over a cliff as you zip by at unbelievable speed. Your body is extended by the feel of metal under you.
Die cast models give you a way to collect the cars of your dreams. When I was asked to investigate reason s for the recent explosion of interest in die cast models, I knew very little about them. Someone had given me a model of a car I fell in love with at Sebring when the FIA came to race in October of 1996. It was a Mercedes and it was sweet. I found out that what I had was a 1/43 and was only one of the more popular sizes.
Die Cast models are not only toys but are collectibles for sportscar race fans and automotive aficionados. I needed to take a closer look. What about the craze for die cast model cars? What different kinds and sizes are there? Who is buying them and why? I went to vendors booths to collect data and like an FBI profiler, began to construct a picture of the avid collector. Surveying the shoppers, I walked by the tent with the most extensive display of automobile art and was very surprised to see there were so many people milling about and looking to buy photographs, paintings and die cast models. I began by just talking with the people who were picking up the cars and looking at them. Some talked about a particular race they had seen, the detail, or the model. I asked a few people why they found these models so appealing .
