Dave Gilbert

Dave Gilbert was born in 1941, and always built models as a boy, mostly balsa wood and card, and remembers the Micromodels range of printed card models.

Dave made a model of the coronation coach for school, and as a result he was featured in the Birmingham Mail in 1952. His mum was very proud!

Subject ID: 82811

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Dave Gilbert was born in 1941, and always built models as a boy, mostly balsa wood and card, and remembers the Micromodels range of printed card models.

Dave made a model of the coronation coach for school, and as a result he was featured in the Birmingham Mail in 1952. His mum was very proud!

At the age of 15, Dave was offered a place at Moseley College of Art, but chose instead to take up an apprenticeship at The Birmingham Guild.

A succession of very short term jobs followed, professional model making remaining his ultimate goal. In 1968 Dave entered and won two categories in an international scale modelling competition in 1:32 and 1:24 scales. John Day saw the winning built models featured in an article locally and contacted Dave with a view to producing masters for a new venture he was undertaking concerning 1:43 scale racing cars. It was this meeting with John Day that changed his life.

Model Cars magazine of March 1971 described John’s ideas, confirming that Dinky Toys were made for children, not collectors, a belief confirmed by the late Doug McHard, and so John Day asked Dave to make him a brass master for his planned 1914 Mercedes GP and 1954 Ferrari 375. Dave was paid £15 for creating the master for the Mercedes.

At this point, Dave felt it seemed like John Day, Ian Pickering, Barry Lester (Auto Replicas) and himself were the sole producers in the industry. He remembers Barry Lester producing the Lotus racing car, and stating that the spaghetti shaped exhaust pipes should be made of wire and bent by the model maker. Dave took the view that modellers may not have the patience to do this, and so cast a complete set of “spaghetti” pipes. Similarly, on a Bugatti, Dave was asked to add 120 louvres on to the bonnet.

In the beginning of his model making career, Dave employed vulcanised rubber moulds, using jewellery manufacturer Karl Zissman for casting, and made Austin Seven vans, tourers, and a Duesenberg.

The definition was poor so he decided to build his own centrifugal casting machine, which he did using an old Hoover electric drill. He fitted the chuck with a disc, and with clamps and slots in a piece of attached wood, he created fixings for the moulds, for pouring the metal whilst the machine was spinning. The system is now pneumatically powered, and can produce up to 100 castings per hour.

In 1971 Dave registered his company as D.G Models, at the same time he began experimenting with silicone compound moulding and centrifugal casting. He perfected this system, and it is still in use today, undertaking the whole process from generating the prototype through to the finished article.

In the early days Dave was selling his kits by word of mouth and reputation, but had regular sales through supplying shops such as Grand Prix Models, originally known as Pit & Paddock, and Lamberts of Ley Street.

Dave’s first models were what the market was craving for; accurate representations of real cars, such as the MG TC, an American Duesenberg racer, and various Jaguars and Bentleys. 

In due course Dave developed the Dinky Style or DS range, which were simpler to make and sold well. Dave approached Meccano Dinky Toys for permission to reproduce the 28, 1st series vans and the 24 series cars, with the Dinky Toys trade mark scored through to distinguish the reproductions from originals. Doug McHard, who was their Marketing Director, asked for a sample to be sent and was so impressed with the quality produced in white metal that he ordered a full set of the vans and cars with the Dinky Toys trade mark to be left intact, to be displayed in the Dinky Toys Museum. One wonders what happened to these examples when Dinky Toys was closed down?

With complete one-piece bodies now available, Dave made for Milikits, Len Buller, and Pirate models. He has developed a way of making masters and casting from any material, even plastic.

After having produced the artwork for his own transfers for the Dinky vans, he found a company in Birmingham which specialised in transfers, and had made the transfers for Dinky Toys using a system called stone engraving. These are now on display in the Science Museum. By the early 1980s, Dave had begun his motor bike models, and obtained orders from the RAC for 1,500 models.

He was selling mostly to the USA, Japan and Canada. There was keen interest from overseas customers for popular marques such as Rolls Royce, Jaguar, Packard, but the lesser known English makes such as Riley were less popular. At its peak, D.G Models/Autocraft was employing up to 5 staff.

During the 1980s Dave teamed up with Brian Evans from Church Stretton, and formed Gemini Diecast International, first developing white metal bodies to attach to proprietary diecast models, such as Yesteryears. A contract was agreed with Creaks of Camberley, to create their Alternative Collection, which were not just new liveries but completely different van and truck bodies. Brian obtained the base models, Dave made the conversions, and so the Code 3 industry took off!

He knew Jack Odell quite well, and when Days Gone started in 1984, Dave and Brian mortgaged their two houses, met with Jack, who always referred to Dave as “that Brummy Bastard”, but in a very affectionate way, and became wholesalers for Lledo! They attended the Harrogate Toy Fair, got rates agreed with Corgi, and soon found themselves shipping out wholesale supplies of W. Britains, Corgi, Matchbox and Lledo to retailers in Australia and America by chartered aircraft. 40,000 Lledo Coca-Cola and Hershey sets passed through their hands on the way across the Atlantic. At one dinner engagement with Jack Odell, Dave recalls suggesting that he made a Morris Minor in the Days Gone range, but he didn’t think it would sell, and gave horse drawn vehicles higher priority.

However, the big time wheeling and dealing was not to Dave’s taste, and in due course he and Brian closed down the Gemini wholesaling business. Dave bought Budgie, Modern Products and Morestone, and after the original dies were tested (they were made in the 1940s and 50s), Dave adapted them for use on modern machinery and produced 2000 of each of the larger Budgie castings, such as the fire engine, V.W. and Wolseley police car, also printing the boxes - the models were offered for sale through Graham Ward’s business Promod, often for promotional purposes.

By now the Chinese writing was on the wall, and diecasts were arriving from China cheaper than they could ever be produced in England. As a result, many shelves full of Budgie boxes, tyres and transfers were emptied and destroyed.

Since then several other Budgie dies have been tested for future releases, including Sam’s Horse Drawn Café and Early English Stagecoach. Recent releases are the Morestone Tandem Cycle with Sidecar and the Ice Cream Salesman.  The original art work and printing plates for Micromodels card cut-out models have also been added to his portfolio which he continues to develop and produce.  Still the main interest in Dave's modelling life is the design and manufacture of white metal models.

Throughout his working life, Dave has viewed his business as a family, and has borrowed and re-mortgaged in order to keep his staff together and production rolling. As such it is promoted as a very small, mainly family run affair based for the past 23 years in a rural South Staffordshire village in the heart of England.

Currently, Dave employs one helper, while his wife undertakes all the secretarial work, his daughter helps with packing, and is training to hopefully take over the business. He is using the same machinery producing a few new models, but some of the old favourites continue to generate a demand. He says it’s in his blood, and now in his late 60s he plans to continue as long as there is a demand out there. At the time of writing Dave's latest creation is the 1928 Morgan Aero in 1:32 scale and 1:43 scale, the first of a planned series of Morgan 3 wheelers.

Subject ID: 82811

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