More space thanks to parking garages
03/02/2026
More parking spaces in the city center? That seems rather unlikely, the trend today is going in exactly the opposite direction: parking spaces are being reduced. However, a parking garage is a good way to create more space for the model collection. After all, space is a rare commodity, and in principle there is always 20 percent too little of it. At least that's how I feel, but I don't want to moan and blame the whole thing on that well-known disease of many of us, the collecting mania!
The last Rétromobile has exacerbated the problem, as I once again came home with a whole bag full of model and toy cars. I immediately invested the proceeds from a recently sold VW engine in an old Japanese classic, the VW Beetle with a glass engine cover from Bandai. I'll get to that another time.
It will always be cramped, because the "fear of empty space" prevails here
My daughter is already worried that one day she'll have to take over her father's immense collection, so at some point I'll at least draw up an inventory of my colorful hodgepodge for her. But before then, and for as long as I am able, my collection will grow. I once thought that collecting was the same as dust. With small traces of it, the growth is still clearly noticeable, but with a thick layer of dust, the difference from one year to the next becomes less and less noticeable as the amount steadily increases. But I was wrong, the attraction remains exactly the same and I love taking this or that piece off the shelf and dusting it off..., well, I mean: looking at it.
Depreux brochure from the early 1970s ©autoboite.fr
So parking garages are a good way to counteract the lack of space. This also applies on a small scale. I like the creations of the Depreux company. Jean Depreux from Rubaix in France started making 1/43rd scale garages for the toy cars that became popular after the Second World War in a house in his garden in 1950. He soon had to expand and offered his colorful garages made of wood and plastic not only in his own toy store, but also as a French manufacturer at home and abroad.
A garage from the late 1950s
A clever collaboration with Esso brought their logo onto many of his products. Jean Depreux soon employed 100 people and also imported toys from other manufacturers to France. In 1975, he sold his company to a toy entrepreneur with a wide range of products and retired in 1979; in 1981, the garages, which had been made of wood and plastic until the end, disappeared. A good friend was able to find a decent example at a flea market a while ago and kindly brought it to me. Unfortunately, it has already been filled up again.
