During the fifties and sixties a lot of tin toys of different brands were produced in Japan

At the beginning of the sixties the manufacturer with the label M* made a sheet metal Volvo P 1800 miniature. It has the typical features of the Volvo P 1800 prototype, for example the V in the frontgrille, the wheels and the rear cowhorn bumpers. The miniature has a lot of chromed parts such as bumpers, number plates, headlights, indicators, a far too thick front grille, side trims with upward sweeps, rear lights with wrong trims on top of the mudguards, wheel covers and front and rear window trims around the clear plastic screens. The sidewindows are open and inside all these cars have red/green interiors marked with a very small "made in Japan" visible through the rear window. Usually these M* miniatures have the prototype designed silver chromed wheelcovers, but there are variations like plastic spoke wheels white hubcaps made of tin with a "S" in the middle of a red shield.

M* produced two variations of this Volvo P 1800 miniature, friction powered cars and remote controlled cars with cables, batteryboxes and steering wheels in different colours. These toy cars have real shining lamps inside the headlights and a white plastic steering wheel inside too, the friction powered car don't. The bottom plates of both versions are black without any mark.

Available colours for both versions of these rare Japanese sheet metal cars are red , bright blue, light yellow with a little touch of lightgreen, creamwhite and presumably tourquoise too.

The pale red friction box is smaller with a black and white picture of the P 1800 prototype on top and a stylish drawn red P 1800 on its sides. This box is marked with "Friction Volvo Sport" on all its sides, with the Volvo emblem and the logo of the manufacturer M* (a "M" with 9 stars around in a half circle) and with the "made in Japan".

The yellow box of the other miniatures of is course bigger. On all sides you can read "battrey operated remote control Volvo Sport". A little boy with a Volvo 1800 remote control toy car is drawn on top of this box, the sides are decorated with the red P 1800 drawings of the other box and the logos are the same too.

Whether the remote controlled cars have been the first or whether both versions have been produced at the same time is not documentated.

Peter 14/02/06