Jowett: Dutch Americans
by Douglas R. Kelly
There’s a Dutch maker of toy cars that keeps popping up on my radar screen with new (well, vintage) examples of its output. Best I can remember, this started more than 15 years ago when I acquired a yellow plastic Jowett Javelin model, about five inches in length. Jowett introduced the full-size Javelin in Britain in 1947, and it offered innovations like a curved windscreen (the first on a British car) and an aerodynamically efficient body. It was an elegant and quirky car, and it remained in the Jowett lineup until around 1953. Approximately 22,000 were made, which isn’t a lot, and few of those ever made it here to the United States.
powering the front wheels.
But there’s an American connection here, which we’ll get to shortly. My yellow Jowett is a simple one-piece body shell, and it captures the Jowett very well. It has a working friction motor with MADE IN GERMANY stamped on the gear casing. There’s no maker’s mark or identification anywhere on it, and despite digging for more information, I’m no closer to finding out who made it or where.
Then I stumbled on its twin, or so I thought, in one of those flat metal-and-glass cases on a dealer’s table at a toy show about 10 years ago. It had the original box sitting next to it. The model was yellow, like my mystery car, and in perfect original condition with a clockwork motor. There was no key, but I paid the $45 asking price and then took it over to my friend Ben Kriner, who had a table set up nearby.
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He looked at my new Jowett and said, “You know, I think I have the pickup truck from that series…not here, it’s at home.”
He sent me photos the following week, and the pickup was indeed another in the series, measuring 4.5 inches in length. Ben and I agreed on a price, and the pickup joined the two Jowetts sitting on my shelf. Ben’s pickup came with the original key, so I tested the clockwork motor, which powered the front wheels, and it went like the wind.
The second Jowett isn’t a dead ringer for my mystery Jowett, but it’s close. The model and the box are unmarked, but it turned out to have been made by Luxor, which was based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in the mid-1950s. It’s the same size as my mystery Jowett, and the clockwork motor powers the rear wheels. It’s made of a translucent, more brittle plastic than the mystery Jowett, and the finish and overall quality of the Luxor aren’t quite as sharp.
The motor works, but it’s weak. Still, like the mystery model, the Luxor is a very good likeness of the Javelin, even featuring a more accurate grille and bonnet.
The one-color boxes for the Jowett and the pickup feature artwork with a charming period flavor, showing a street-and-bridge scene and a lineup that appears to include the four models in the series: the Jowett, a small pickup truck, a large pickup truck, and an Armstrong Siddeley coupe.
The large pickup suddenly rang a bell. I went over to one of my cabinets and pulled out a larger blue Luxor pickup truck that I had bought on eBay a couple of years earlier. It measures 5 7/16 inches in length and is a visual match for the larger pickup shown on the boxes. Like the Jowetts and the smaller pickup, this larger Luxor truck is a simple one-piece body shell with hard plastic tires.
That simplicity didn’t stop this Dutch maker from producing two unmistakably American pickup trucks. It’s hard to tell whether they were based on a Ford, a Chevrolet, or a Studebaker, but they perfectly capture the early postwar American truck vibe.
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The box for the blue Luxor truck is one of my favorite pieces of cardboard. It’s constructed like a garage, complete with a peaked roof and artwork that includes an Esso petrol pump. The top and bottom panels of the garage state, in Dutch, “Luxor toys are safe toys. They are colourfast, durable, washable, non-flammable, splinter- and chip-free. Make your boy happy with a Luxor car park.”
That would do it for me.
Next time, we’ll look at the most recent Luxor to roll into my parking lot—it’s American, at least partially, and it too is a mystery.
Douglas R. Kelly is the editor of Marine Technology magazine. His byline has appeared in Antiques Roadshow Insider; Back Issue; Diecast Collector; RetroFan; and Buildings magazines.
