The Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle was a very successful medium-range jet airliner produced by the French SNCASE firm later known as Sud Aviation, later absorbed into Airbus Industries. First flown in 1955 it entered service in 1959 and was quite successful. The Caravelle design established the aft-mounted-engine, clean-wing design that later became the standard configuration for an entire generation of new airliners. The Caravelle first served with Air France, SAS, Air Algerie, Finnair, Royal Air Maroc, Swissair, and even with United.
It may be of interest to some MACers that the cockpit design of the earlier D.H. Comet airliner was copied for the Caravelle. They are nearly identical and for good reason. The Caravelle designers bought the design rights from DH!
The French Meccano firm in 1959 decided to create a 1/190 scale model as an Air France Dinky Toys Supertoys and produced it with underwing cast-in markings as 60F MECCANO - DINKY SUPERTOYS - MADE IN FRANCE - CARAVELLE SE 210, but without an underside hole (called a painting hole as it was used to mount the toy for painting). The engines had an inlet cone.
It was sold in the in three slightly different versions of the SUPERTOYS striped box. The last version had No. 891 on a label on the side of the box. This was a newly assigned number in 1960 that never appeared in the casting but was used in French sales catalogs as late as 1965.
The toy had a play action feature ‘Escalier Escamotable’ of operating rear stairs, and it had the black registration FB on the port (left) wing and GNY on the starboard one.
The No. 60F issue of the Caravelle was a very popular addition to the French toy line. The casting was excellent, no painting hole was present and the Air France transfer decals were accurate.
Then in 1960 three new variants were made; Swissair Caravelle No. 891B, SAS Caravelle No. 891C, and
Air Algerie Caravelle No. 891D. These used the normal 60F French tooling as described above with no changes. These aircraft used standard painted Caravelle castings with the white fuselage top and silver bottom transformed only with attractive new transfer decals. A large, individual red label was stuck on the standard box top for each named variant. A newly discovered 1960 Dutch and a 1961 Austrian catalog that listed these variants for sale disproves that the widely held ideas that they were produced in 1961 and then only for promotional in-flight sale or gifting by each airline. No catalog listings apparently occurred in France or the major markets and consequently, these variants are very rare and command very high prices when offered for sale.
About this time Meccano was sold and the new owner decided to eliminate a lot of duplicated manufacturing facilities by centering most die casting production in the UK. Many French toys and all the French aircraft except the Caravelle were soon dropped from production.
But for an extremely limited time and before the tooling for the Caravelle was transferred to the UK, the tooling was modified in preparation for sharing with England with the addition of No. 997 (the English reference number) and FRANCE was now on a changeable cartouche. The French reference 60F was also retained This variant was produced in France until close to the end of 1960 when the tooling was transferred to England.
The first examples of the British toy were available by January 1962. They were now marked 60 F - MECCANO - DINKY SUPERTOYS- MADE IN ENGLAND - CARAVELLE SE 210 - 997. It used the same registration, F-BGNY, but it was now in blue and only on one wing. Some other changes were made to the transfer decals; the triangular windows were much larger, the word Caravelle was been eliminated from the sides at the front, and the tail fin stripe was straight, not curved. This variant used the original French tooling with the 'ENGLAND' now on the changeable cartouche. Production continued until 1965.
Later examples were produced without the engine cones and with the painting hole and the last British production examples used plastic wheels.
Thanks to the detective work of Jacques du Jardin {creator of the must-have Dinky Toys Encyclopedia CD- contact dinkycollect@free.fr}, we now know that the tooling was transferred between the UK and France for local production perhaps as late as 1965, and some of the tooling changes could have occurred at any time after the first British production run.
