High up on my list of all-time favourite cars is the Lancia Flaminia Coupe. Although I wouldn’t say no to the Berlina it’s the more elegant Coupe that I really love and the best small version of it was made in period by Solido.
I have been keeping an eye out for one for ages, but they don’t come up for sale that often and when they do, they still fetch around £50 for an undamaged example with another £20 or £30 on top of that if it still has its box.
I was recently very lucky to pick up this pair of play worn but still quite smart examples. The grey car needs a couple of new tyres and has somehow lost a large chunk of its parcel shelf area of the interior which has partly exposed the rear suspension coil spring, but it still works and you have to look closely to see that so I’m not complaining. Happily, neither of mine have suffered from this model’s weak point which seems to be those very slim front roof pillars, most of the ones for sale online seem to have lost one or both of theirs.
I have a newer model made by Starline which has far more detail than these two but I think these old Solido versions just captured that hard to quantify ‘look’ better than any other. Too much detail on such a small scale model can clutter it so I think the basic but well-proportioned good quality look of these works very well.
The bad pun in the title refers to the car being named after the Roman road ‘Via Flaminia’ which runs from Rome to Rimini if you didn’t know and I didn’t until just now as I’ve yet to visit Italy but I do remember encountering a beautiful silver Flaminia Coupe cutting its way through town centre traffic somewhere in Belgium a couple of years ago and it looked extremely classy amongst all the oversized blobby nondescript modern vehicles.
So, seek out a sixties Solido version, it’s a pleasing model to own and is about a thousand times cheaper than a real one.
Are you a Solido diecast fan, or do you adore the Flaminia as much as Baz?
Let us know and leave your comments in the box at the bottom of the page.
