The Beautiful Gunthermann Roll Top Cars

Tuesday, January 14, 2015
Sunny and very, very cold

A Beautiful Gunthermann Roll Top Limousine

  I was growing the Internet this morning when I came across a "roll top".  In the 1980's give or take 10 years, I used to see the occasional small-sized Citroen with a roll top. It was made of canvas, and you could roll  or unroll the canvas top to expose the sky. Some people even nicknamed it a "sardine can". Naturally, when I saw the Gunthermann roll top, I decided to post that for today. Of course the Gunthermann roll top was modelled after a limousine, so I'm sure if there was a "real car" at the time, I'm sure no one would "dare" call it a sardine can.

Please click here to visit this fine American auction company

The roll back limousine below is a wind-up toy. What I like about it is that it has electric headlights that were most likely operated from a battery, with an off/on switch. In the description below, you can read that the toy originally belonged to (Provenance) Gottschalk, an American woman known for both collecting antique toys and also writing about them.

In the bottom photo,I thing I see another light in the  about the driver's inner windshield frame.

I had to look closer at this model to see why it was only 15" (381 mm) in length. It turns out that this model is a 2-door,whereas the other 2 toys on this page are true limousines with 4 doors. I also like the nickel-plated bumpers. Imagine, a toy that had nickel-plated bumpers. Our 5 cent Canadian coin used to be called a "nickel" because it was made from nickel.  Nowadays, it's made from some sort of metal, and the Canadian government even got rid of the "copper" penny (1 cent coin).

I also like the chauffeur who is very thin. I find this sort of like Some of the Dali painting where things are stretched surrealistically on the canvas or appear to melt.

 The description below has the length at 17 1/2", so I 'm wondering if there was either an error in the above car or this one below. Or, perhaps, there were 2 different sizes altogether.

I'll try and remember to check for other auctioneers listings to see 

what the actual sizes of these "roll tops" are.

I came across the roll top bus (below) later in the day and added it to this post after the post was up. Interestingly, I could only find 1 anywhere on the Internet. If anyone out there has one, I'd be happy to add it to this  post if you'd send me the photos. I can;t believe that I could only find one!

Thanks for dropping by,and as always,

have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be,

Stacey

toysearcher@gmail.com