Canadian Hubley

This colourful combination of a pick-up truck caught my eye recently on a well know auction website so I bought it to have a closer look. That’s my excuse anyway.

The truck is a 1960 or there abouts Chevrolet pick-up with a bright red cab and a baby blue bed, it also has mismatched wheels to complete the look. The base plate shows ‘Hubley Tow & Pick-Up, Real Types, Made in Canada’. It seems to be quite a rare item over here anyway, maybe they’re tripping over them in Canada and America but I couldn’t find many images online but I did see another one in this colour combination so that does appear to be original and not a mistake or a making a good one out of two situation. I did see an image of a period advertisement which listed 20 different models and some emergency service variations and the suggested retail price was 70 cents.

My example has lost its original front wheels somewhere along the last 66 years as it now sports solid plastic replacements. As you can see it’s bigger than the Matchbox El Camino and smaller than the Corgi model from the James Bond range, the original advert gives the scale as 1/60 and boasts of ‘All metal body, rubber tires and plastic windows’. I’m keeping my eye out now for some other models from this range – I quite fancy one of their Studebaker Hawk, Chrysler Imperial or Metro Van models.