You may recall seeing this in my earlier post on the Schuco BMW Isetta, where I had used this in a comparison with the German “bubble car” and some vintage Kei trucks from Tomica’s Limited Vintage series. Given it’s such a cool little car in its own right, I thought it’s about time it gets space for itself. And seeing as it’s the only R360 in this scale, Single File is a perfect platform.
This model is one of my random Ebay finds I picked up a few years ago. The car came in stripped down, pre painted model kit form vacuum packed rather unflatteringly to a piece of card. It was part of a 20 car series (10 cars in 2 liveries each) that included a Toyota Corona coupe and Honda S600 amongst others. DyDo are actually a drinks brand in Japan, and as far as I am aware the cars in this series are nearly 20 years old, and were made by Konami.
This R360 in vintage race livery is my favourite out of the series. It’s representation of a car that ran in the Kei class of the inaugural Japan Grand Prix race in 1963, and it is awesome. It’s not 100% faithful to the real car (and the race car didn’t run white walls with chrome hubcaps, of course) but it’s a brilliant historical nod to the early days of Japanese motorsport.
And it’s rather well made. The front lights are replicated in plastic bead and the paint and decals are impressive. These can really let a model of this size down as blemishes and errors show up easily. But I’m happy to report no trouble at all with my model.
And it really is a tiny thing. For once in a rare occurence I actually had a spare £1 coin on me for size comparison, and you can see for yourselves how diminutive this thing is.
I’m also pleased to say it’s not suffered from any kind of price explosion or “scene tax” since I picked mine up. Prices still hover around £10 on Ebay. And if you follow The Toy Pimp on IG he has had a couple of the DyDo kits for sale recently too, so it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on his feed. And, as I mentioned earlier, DyDo R360s are the only ones in this scale. Seeing as it’s one of the most important vehicles in the history of Kei cars, this surprises me. There’s barely even any R360s in larger scales. I’d love to see Tomica tackle it as a Limited Vintage, or Kyosho as part of a Kei collection, but for now this will do just fine.
And if you do go on a search for DyDo, you’ll see their name on 1/64 Ferrari kits of road and F1 cars, so something else may just take your fancy. And while you’re on your internet travels, if you find yourself wanting to see even more diecast and occasional pictures of my garage, visit Instagram where you can find me @alex_the_hoarder.
