Founded in the United Kingdom in 1953, Matchbox has become world renowned for creating both realistic die-cast and plastic scaled models of cars ranging from classic racing cars to tractors & trailers. Matchbox toy vehicles are known for their fine detail and are popular with both young children to adult collectors. Quite a number of die cast tractors and associated farm machinery has been produced over the years & are highly sought after by aficionados of these working vehicles.

Another famous company who first started their die cast miniature vehicles in 1934 from the Meccano factory located in Liverpool, England. The first vehicles were made from lead and included a racing car, tractor, delivery van, truck, sports car & a tank. Initially the vehicles were not particularly accurate representations of their subects, but did always have rubber tires. Dinky toy vehicles soon caught the attention of young people & the company went from strength to strength over the next three decades, but finally succumbed to intense competition & closed its doors in 1979.

Louis Marx & Company was founded in 1919 in New York City, and was destined to become the largest toy manufacturer in the world by the mid 1950's. Although the Marx name is now largely forgotten except by toy collectors, several of the products that the company developed remain strong icons in popular culture. Some of the most collectible of the Marx toys were the lithographed tinplate agricultural toys that the company manufactured during the 1930's.

A German company who produced traditional tinplate mechanical toys since before WW1. They produced many tinplate commercial vehicles including lithographed tractors & farm machinery commissioned by the manufacturers like John Deere & International Harvester. It wasn't until the 60's that they included plastic injection for making their products, this allowed them to put a lot more detail into the finished product. In the 1970's they brought out a range of die cast vehicles branded as Mini-Mods which are now very collectible.

Mettoy Playcraft Ltd introduced the Corgi Toys range of vehicles in 1956, they were soon to become the largest manufacturer of die cast vehicles in the world. Great detail & innovations such as clear plastic windows proved to be a great hit & in the first year alone 2.75 million toy vehicles were sold. This robbed Dinky of a great deal of the market, but Corgi Toys fortunes were to temporarily held up due to a massive fire which destroyed their Swansea factory. Revival of the company was greatly helped by the James Bond Aston Martin DB5 & the 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' models.