My Favorite Ride: Collection includes 1,770 tiny cars and one full-size Ford Mustang
Alex Tanford's car collection started off simple enough.
It was 20 years ago when the Indiana University law professor decided to search for 1/64-scale diecast toy replicas of the cars he'd owned throughout his life. A few dozen or so.
Two decades later, Tanford displays his cars in custom-built shelving units, 12 long rows in each. They're attached with bolts to three walls in the basement of his Bloomington home.
His collection now includes 1,770 vehicles, give or take a few. Really. Most are Hot Wheels-size, although the diecast 1/64-scale ones from Europe are a bit bigger.
Tanford has another collection, of about 40 1/43-scale diecast vehicles, displayed in his Mauer Law School office. Graduate students' kids and coworkers' children have spent hours driving them around on the carpet while the adults went about their business. "Mine was the only office that had toys," Tanford said.
The cars displayed in his basement are parked side-by-side at an angle on the shelves behind clear hard plastic panels. Others are in drawers labeled by year, waiting to be taken out of the packaging to find a place among the rest.
The cars are organized by year, he starts with 1948, and are parked in alphabetical order within each year. Tanford created a multi-page master list cross referencing the vehicles in his collection.
For instance, if you wanted to see all of the Cadillacs, there's a list of them. Station wagons? Trucks? Convertibles? He knows how many he has and what year each is from. There are no duplicates.
Tanford also knows the cars he doesn't have, cars he owned in their full size but can't locate in 1/64-scale replicas. He's pretty sure no one made the tiny toy version of a Nash Ambassador; his parents owned a 1950 model, the first car he ever drove.
When he was 16, Tanford learned to drive in a 1963 Ford Fairlane station wagon with a three-on-the-tree shifter. "I don't have that one either," he said.
Tanford also would love to find a 1/64-scale version of a late 1980s Mazda 626. He drove a 1989 model he and his wife traded in overnight for a Ford Windstar van when they realized their cool car wasn't big enough for a family.
"We went to load two kids, a crib and all of our stuff for a Christmas vacation to Green Bay, Wisconsin, to see the inlaws that year, when we realized there was no way it would all fit into the car," he recalled.
They delayed the trip a day and went straight to Bloomington's Chrylser dealership to buy a Dodge Caravan, a vehicle with lots of room for chidren. When no one waited on them, they went across to the Ford dealership and purchased a new Windstar minivan there.
Yes, he has a Ford Windstar in his collection. It's in the 1/43 scale group at his university office.
His favorite toy car? Tanford doesn't hesitate when asked, and walks over to the shelf where the 1966 models are parked. He removes a lightweight black 1966 Volvo PV544 sedan. "It's the only one in the collection that's not diecast," he said.
I looked over the shiny plastic bauble, which had been attached to a keychain. That it wasn't made of metal doesn't matter.
Because sometimes, collectors stumble upon something meant just for them.
"I was in a toy store in Whitbey, in the northeast corner of England, when I found it," Tanford recalled.
I wonder what the odds are of randomly finding a 1/64 scale model of an obscure Volvo Tanford owned in 1970?
The pictures of the diecast cars featured here aren't perfectly focused.
There wasn't much light and they are small, so capturing detail meant getting close and blurring out the sides. Let's call it artsy photography and leave it at that.
Speaking of pictures, I took some crystal-clear focused ones of a 1967 Ford Mustang convertible, full sized and with seats for four, that was parked in Tanford's driveway when I got there. I'll be writing about that next time.
Until then, I wish you all a happy holiday season. Thanks for reading. My Favorite Ride will continue in 2023, because I'm pretty sure I won't be running out of car stories.
Have a story to tell about a car or truck? Contact My Favorite Ride reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: My Favorite Ride: Collection includes 1,770 or so tiny cars
