I spent a whole weekend on the premises of Bickel-Tuning in Rheinau to photograph and measure Gerd Körber’s Phoenix-MAN on site, because there were no drawings of this racing truck.
Months later: approval of the so-called “first shots” at Heljan in Denmark. On the table the prototype model, surrounded by the parts from the injection moulding machine.
The three of us had each built, checked, tested and documented a model.
On the left a Heljan employee, on the right Bertus Backer, who drew the assembly instructions.
From a model-building point of view, this model was something quite different from the truck models we were used to.
Besides the Körber model there was also the variant of Curt Göransson, technically identical, just painted differently and fitted with different decals.
But before the angular MAN was finished as a model, the Mercedes forward-control trucks of the NG series were already racing around the Nürburgring. It was the era of the racing trucks, of which you no longer see or hear anything today.
This phase of model development at Revell was a great time, too. And during the heyday of truck racing events, we Revell people were in the Eifel as well, with a tent and an exhibition pavilion.