[slotcar7]

Hi guys, some time ago i bought this set and this single slot car, and i was thinking it could be nice to show them to you, to please the really old stuff lovers

It's a French Auto Route LR set, probably made in 1938..it's always a quite rare set, but this one, after more than 70 years, it's still MIB

And it goes together with a single Salmson car, again MIB

And if you want to see more of them you can go to:

http://www.bilbaneforumet.se/viewtopic.php...5&start=345

enjoy..

 

[dgersh]

Thanks David.

These are beautiful sets of course, and very solidly built cars! All metal... Supposed to be a Salmson.

The particular characteristic is that the cars are supposed to be able to pass each other, using the metal bodies as a ground to maintain contact... (it's a metal track, with raised edges, and as you can see the steering is spring load to always point one way). Seems it didn't really work all that well, but it's an excellent concept, concept-wise... like a lot of other French inventions (no kidding, lots of firsts, most of which weren't all that practical, or didn't get the development money and smarts...).

The cars are still relatively common, if you're willing to pay a price, but complete sets are not! A guy on French ebay has been selling the same car in a non-motorized version, which would be an interesting variant.

There's some question whether production continued after the war, but I think it came out in 1936-37, will have to check.

Don

 

[TSRF]

Don,
I am pretty sure that sales of large inventories if not new production resumed after the war because I recall seeing a set in a famous Parisian toy store, in about 1952, and I went to the Peugeot model car show on the Champs Elysees circa 1958 (cannot be sure of the year) in which they had a large LR layout with 4 or 6 lanes (cannot recall) with the cars controlled by steering wheels and a "gas" pedal, in an almost identical way to that of AMCRC years later.
That day, the cars, limited to a single lane each, appeared to work properly, but I was quickly eliminated in the contest because I did not figure that the steering was simply an electrical switch to provide current in the turns. Of course no one explained that to me either!

Ne pas oublier que la production des jouets Louis Roussy (LR) continua jusqu'en 1956.

 

[slotcar7]

Hi, I just checked some LR catalogues, and it's right that production ended in 1956, but the Auto Route was never advertised in any of the post war catalogues..so, I think the most probable answer it's they carried on selling all the left-over sets dating from some years earlier..

That said, even some track pieces of my set are wrapped in a newspaper's sheet dated 1948, but I think that it should be a later addition by the LR warehouse or by some shop's dealer..even the car, a Salmson S4 Coupe, dates back to the mid 30s..

The reason of all that, I guess, following Don's words, is that, at the end of the day, this system never worked really properly and was never a best seller..that's my opinion

david