As you enjoyed the article abot the Jouef track pieces, I whant to give you a closer look to the Jouef slotcars, as the most of us never had one in their hand.

Jouef roduced from 1963 to 1980 slotcars and sets.

Founded in 1944 as "Le Jouet Francais", what is translated "the french toy". The first toys where model railways. In the 50ies the name changed from "Le Jouet Francais" to JOUEF.

To get on the booming market slotcars, Jouef presented in 1963 their own slot system named "Circuit 64", wich came, as shown in the name, 1964 in the stores.

Jouef did, as a lot of other toy manufactures, change over the time under the presure of asian production and the slow death of the slot car industries. In 1980 the french slot car production whas closed, in 2001 the name Jouef disappeared completely from the market.

Now we will take a look on the cars...

There where officiall 151 different cars.

Jouef always tried, as do the other manufactures, to keep the cars as close to the taste of time as possible, so we find the most interessting cars between 1960 and 1980: Ferrari, Lancia Stratos, Ford Capri and much more.



The first models where the Jaguar E-Type Cabrio and the Mercedes 300 Cabiro - unfortunaly I don´t own the Mercedes, as I didn´t get a car in good condition for under 100 Euro...

Very popular was the Ferrari 250 GTO (1963):



Jouef was at the beginning always close to the best pieces, i.e. 1967 with the 1966 winner of the 24 h from LeMans, the Ford GT.



Each innovation was taken with, so i.e. the Renault Alpine 3000 (1968) or the Alfa Romeo Carbone (1979)



Also quite nice to see where the german touring cars, like the BMW 3.0 CSL (1975)...



.. wich was very detailled.



All international markets where served - as 40 years later the actuall manufactures. Porsche 911 (1974), Matra Bagheera (1978)



For shure Jouef did make special modells - at all two of them: a chromed Ferrari GTO, a chromed B.R.M. and a golden Ferrari F1 from 1964 - extremely rare, extremely expensive:



The official 151 cars are enriched by cars that never have been sold (like the white GO!!!-F1). One of those never existed cars is the black Porsche 904 GT, wich was an internal series for production check...

...don´t ask, I will not sell him:



As mentioned before, Jouef did came more and more under cost pressure. Very good to see at the rims (here the Chaparral 2F (beginning 1969)



There where in time three rim types - the beautifull chromed ols rims (top), the same version unchromed (bottom) and the fits-all rims of the late 70ies (middle).



Jouef did produce from beginning guided pin and front wheels Jouef, but withe the time this wonderfull system was changed to fix pieces, as it was too expencive. The chassis was always the same - here you can see a Lancia Stratos with guided wheels (1975) and a Ford GT (produced ca. 1979).



Jouef did give also licences to other european manufactures, like the german Egger and to a spanish company. Those cars are really hard to find!

After 1980 there where still slot car sets sold in France under the name of Jouef, but this where the all known Artin sets of the time with only the name on it.

I hope you enjoyed our trip in history...

.. see y´a tomorrow!

Creation date : 10/12/2007 at 00:56
Last update : 18/01/2010 at 16:54
Category : Jouef

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