Schuco Micro Racers
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Schuco Micro racers in the approximate scale of 1:40 were available from 1954 and soon became the latest craze in the world of wind-up racing cars.
Their unsurpassed features such as heavy die-cast bodies, extremely fast and long-running spring-drive mechanisms, micro-adjustment wheel control for precise direction runs, free-wheel facility for test purposes even with wound-up motor and last, but not least - the tremendous speed they attained, made them longtime favorites in many countries and at many playgrounds.
Starting in 1954, Schuco issued a new model just about every year. In 1967 the bodies were no longer made of diecast metal but of plastic and the production was stopped altogether in 1969.
A lot of the tooling for the Micro Racers was bought at the Schuco solvency auction in 1976 (after Schuco had gone bankrupt) by former Schuco employee Werner Nutz who started a small scale re-production of a number of the models but unfortunately, Mr. Nutz died before he could crank out decent numbers of these cars.
The tools were consequently acquired by an American company from the widow of Werner Nutz and the production was moved to Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The markings of the boxes and car bodies went through several stages, from being fully marked "Schuco" and "Made In Germany" to fully blanked out make name and blacked-out make name on the boxes and wind-up keys.
In the mid-1990's, the revived Schuco company reached an agreement with the owners of the tooling to produce official Schuco Micro Racers again, properly marked and sold through the Schuco organization.
In the early 2000's Schuco ran into disagreement with the manufacturing plant and the production was once again stopped (this time for good?). The Micro Racers from that production have long sold out but of course they can sometimes still be found in "as new" condition.
One has to take care with the values of the Schuco Micro Racers as the markings are not always correct and sometimes relatively recent cars are (unknowingly?) passed off as "Genuine Schuco" or even as "Vintage".
As Micro Racers from virtually all periods of their have become more of less collectable (the original production of course being VERY collectible!) we will offer on this page all Micro Racers that we come across and are worth offering to you. We will of course clearly indicate from which production they are so that you never have to doubt what you are buying.