The only South African manufacturer of diecast model cars was Arthur E. Harris from Johannesburg. In the 1960s, Harris was the South African importer of Dinky Toys. After South Africa had withdrawn from the Commonwealth in 1961 and imposed a luxury tax on imported toys from England, he bypassed the new law by having delivered raw castings and associated parts from Dinky Toys and by painting and assembling the models in South Africa. The range included English as well as French Dinky Toys models, whose colours sometimes differed from the European models. More recently, 1/43rd scale handbuilt models have been made in South Africa: In 2003, This Way Up started producing 1/43rd scale white metal kits of Formula 1 racing cars from the 1970s, Craig's Models offers resin kits of military and commercial vehicles in smaller scales, including models of the South-African-built Casspir, Milestone Miniatures released 1/43rd scale white metal models of the Chrysler Valiant and the Ford Falcon already in the 1980s, and Geoff Sear, an architect from Durban, manufactured resin model cars in the same scale from the mid-1980s until his death in 2011. His Sear Models range concentrated on relatively unknown sports cars from the 1950s and 1960s and included, besides numerous British prototypes, two cars designed and built in South Africa, the GSM Dart and the Protea Triumph. In 2012, two manufacturers of detailed 1/43rd scale resin models, Premium X and Neo, both introduced models of the Mercedes-Benz 180 D Bakkie, a special pick-up version of this car assembled in South Africa for the local market from 1956 to 1958. A 1/43rd scale resin model of the BMW 2004 M as built in South Africa in the early 1970s was released by Autocult in June 2018. In 2021, Milena Rose introduced a 1/43rd scale resin model of a Peugeot 404 as built in South Africa in 1978. A 1/43rd scale model of the Perana Z-One, a 2009 South African supercar designed by Zagato, has been available from Matrix. A later version of the same car, renamed the AC 378 GT, appeared in the same scale in the Neo range as well as in a partwork series made by Ixo for Centauria. A 1/64th scale Hot Wheels model released in 2023 also reproduces a South African prototype: The Alfa Romeo GTV6 3.0 was developped and built by the South African Alfa Romeo subsidiary in the mid-1980s.
South Africa