COBI Melex 212 Golf Set 24554

COBI's Melex 212 is a 1:35 model built from 94 blocks under licence, with movable wheels, two figures with accessories, scenery elements and a block carrying the printed vehicle name. All markings are printed.

A Polish electric vehicle that sold in America

Melex has been built in Mielec, in south-eastern Poland, since 1971, and most of what the factory made was exported. A great deal of it went to the United States, where Melex golf carts were sold in numbers through the 1970s — an electric vehicle designed and built behind the Iron Curtain, running on American golf courses at the height of the Cold War.

The reason was simple economics. The factory that built them, WSK Mielec, was primarily an aircraft plant, and the carts were a way of earning hard currency with spare capacity. They were simple, slow, easy to repair and cheap.

The vehicles are still made, still electric, and still used where a combustion engine would be unwelcome: golf courses, airports, historic town centres and zoos.

Specifications

Pieces: 94 · Figures: 2 with accessories · Scale: 1:35
Model dimensions: 7.5 × 3.5 × 3.5 cm (3.0 × 1.4 × 1.4 in)