Miniaturas Buby was an Argentine company that manufactured die-cast scale model automobiles and trucks. The company, created by Harold Mahler, was notable for having produced scale model replicas of most of the vehicles manufactured in the country during four decades, such as Fiat 600, Renault 12, Ford Falcon, Citroen 3cv, Renault Fuego, Peugeot 504, among many others.
At its peak, the company produced 1,000 vehicles per day.
History
The company was founded by naval engineer Haroldo Buby Mahler, starting production at his own house in the city of Ranelagh of Greater Buenos Aires in 1956. At the beginning, Mahler (who was a collector of Dinky cars, imported from Europe by then) produced 200 models which he offered with no success until a manager of a toy store bought him 144 cars, a part of giving him a list of potential clients.[1]
The first models were assembled with parts produced by other companies, but Buby soon controlled the total of the production process. By 1964, Buby produced 210,000 models per year, using 2 tons of zamak per month.[2]