A CIJ C2 Alfa Romeo Toy

Thursday, July 4, 2013
   (American Independence Day)

A CIJ C2

Alfa Romeo Toy

   I was actually looking for another toy,but couldn't find a "real" photo of my family to match up with the toy, so I looked elsewhere and found this magnificent toy circa 1937! All of the photos below are of the same toy - a CIJ P2 Alfa Romeo toy racer. It's 20" (.508M) long, and made of painted pressed steel, rubber tires, and leather straps. The gas tank caps open, and the toy is clockwork driven. 

   As far as the "toy" goes, there were several different colour variations that I have presented today. For a toy of that era (1937) there were certainly a lot of small-detailed parts. If you like detail, then check out the post that I wrote about the Pocher cars - now that's detail!

 I was fortunate enough to find several "real" photos of the actual racer and downloaded then from Wikipedia. At that time, Alfa-Romeo of Italy was a serious contender in the European racing scene, and they built some of the more famous and well-designed racing cars.

It's always a great asset, when I can download shared photos or images that I get to use ffrom people of the "real item"!

I'm not sure of the seats were also leather. In the case of my cleaning up the background and using white, the details and the geometric design of the wheels and tires, the front springs, and sway bar  of this car present themselves beautifully.

The people at Bertoia Auctions described this toy as follows:

"This may be the most popular of French toy racers and likely the best one made" 

I would certainly agree!

To my American readers

Happy American Independence Day,

and  to everyone thanks for dropping by.

Have a great part of the day,

wherever you may be.

Stacey