MAN Racing Truck, engl.

I spent a whole weekend on the premises of the Bickel-Tuning company in Rheinau to photograph and measure Gerd Körber’s Phoenix-MAN on site. Because there were no drawings of this racing truck.

And as with some other models, I also had to build a model of this truck for the toy fair in Nuremberg. Building this model wasn’t that difficult as everything was straight, square and edgy.

I had to be careful when applying the decals, I only had one try. The so-called transproofs were produced in an advertising agency and cost several thousand Deutsch Mark.

Months later, the acceptance of the so-called – first shots – at Heljan in Denmark. On the table the prototype model and around it the parts from the injection molding machine.

The three of us had each built a model, checked it, tested it and documented it accordingly. On the left a Heljan employee, on the right Bertus Backer, who drew the building instructions.

From a model building point of view, this model was something completely different from the truck models that we were always used to.

In addition to the Körber model, there was also the variant by Curt Göransson, technically identical, just painted differently and equipped with different decals.

But before the angular MAN was finished as a model, the Mercedes forward control vehicles from the NG series drove around the Nürburgring. It was the time of the racing trucks, but you don’t see or hear anything about them anymore.

This phase of model development at Revell was also a good time. And during the heyday of truck racing events, we revellers were also in the Eifel with a tent and exhibition pavilion.