1930s Art Deco street scene diorama

It's been a while (six months!) since my last post here at "The Die is Cast", so it's time for an update on what I've been up to. I've been building a model of a bus and a car, both from the Art Deco era, both from Europe in the 1930s. They're all part of an Art Deco themed diorama I am slowly putting together.

This is a little built plastic model of an Opel Blitzbus, the Strassenzepp Essen, or road Zeppelin. This actual bus was built in the 1930s, and was used notably to ferry around competitors at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, as a showcase of the modernity of those Neanderthal Nazis.

The plastic kit itself is by a Ukrainian company, Roden, and it's moderately OK (main components fitted together) and moderately crappy (dreadful decals), too. But it's the only Art Deco bus kit I can find. Love those fins! The people in the bus aren't part of the kit. I added some 1/72 Airfix plastic soldiers as "passengers" in my Blitzbus. 

To give you an idea of its size, the bus is about as big as a 1/43 scale car, maybe a bit smaller.

The other vehicle in my diorama will be this 1/72 scale Tatra T87, from a plastic kit made by Attack Models. Attack is a Czech company, but for my money I group them with the Ukrainian and Russian companies for quality of everything from castings to decals. The good thing about these people is that they make models of cars, planes etc that suit my quirky tastes. 

The model kit was for a WWII military Tatra T87, but it was close enough for me to make it into a nice, silver, civilian one.

The bus was first produced in 1936, and the Tatra T-87 first appeared in 1936, so both are nice and new and shiny, and I love those fins on both of them.

And this is an Art Deco theatre that's in Tasmania. I am planning to build this in 3D using foam board, so this photo is simply my reference guide. I figure that for a beginner, three holes and lots of straight lines should be all I should attempt ...

I've made some progress since this posting, but I will save all that for an update next time I get a chance to do it.


 

Seeking out Tatras

I've only been seriously collecting diecast cars since early this year, and as soon as I decided that a couple of cabinets full of model cars and bikes is exactly what my study (and I) needed, a Czech-made Tatra was up at the top of my shopping list, along with a lot of French cars and a varied miscellany of other vehicles. 

At first I thought Tatras, being such a famous and unusual car, would at least be a popular model that would be readily available. Alas no. While not truly unobtainium, they're not all that common, and it took a while for this inexperienced researcher to find his first one. I now have three little Tatras in the cabinet, and so I found a scene from the Tatra Mountains, after which the car was named, to serve as a backdrop for some photos of them.

A Tatra T77, 1934 model. The model is 1:43 by IXO. As well as loving the red
colour, this rear side-on view shows the aerodynamic shape quite clearly.

Look at the front end of the Tatra and you can see the beginnings of a VW
beetle. When you consider that there's a rear-mounted air-cooled engine
in the back and the familiarity is even stronger. Admittedly the donk in the
Tatra is a 3-litre V8, much bigger than the little flat four in the Vee dub.
Later engines on the T77 were increased in size to 3.3 litres.

A video I have for you later on in this post gives
the in-car view through the vision slits of a
later model, the Tatraplan 600 of 1952. I love
the comment from the owner of the Tatraplan:
"All you can see through the back is the car
behind you just before it hits you."

This is actually the first Tatra model I bought (it's also by IXO). While I loved
it, I was just a bit disappointed at the black colour scheme, which makes it
hard to easily see and appreciate all the details. When I saw the red one on
eBay, I decided that a second Tatra was well worth the investment.

While looking for another T77 I came across the next model Tatra on eBay, the
T87, fittingly enough in a 1:87 scale, made by Wiking, a German model maker
who specialises in this tiny scale.

The Tatra T87 was named as the most collectable (real-size) car of 2010 by the New York Times, and if you have a spare 128,000 Euros, there's a Tatra T87 for sale here at Classic Car Sales.

And so now it's video time to tell you all you need to know about Tatra design. I have found three that are well worth a look. The first two are a guided tour, inside and out, of the Tatra T87 at the Minnesota Museum of Art, and the third is a "ride with Chuck" in the 1952 Tatraplan (which has a smaller flat-four engine but still embodies many of the design features of the T77 and T87 which preceded it). And so it's on with the Tatra Show.