40M Minic Mechanical horse and trailer with cases : From London to Bombay

I recently got into Minic's.
I had seen some examples at the Galerie du jouet ancien in Paris several years ago when the owner had bought a collection of pre-war models in Brittany. There were of course several Dinky toys, Tootsietoys, some rare Taylor & Barrett and other slush cast from both sides of the Atlantic. At the time I had the opportunity of buying a very rare French A.R. Peugeot 402 "Fuseau Socheaux" in very nice condition (I'll write something about those models sometime), but I had only glanced at some tin toys I didn't really know. I remember there was a 34M Tourer with the T&B passengers and of course the shell tin can on the running board. I remember wondering the car was too big compared to a regular 1/43 scale one, but the trucks were the perfect size. Anyway a few days after they were all gone and therefore I forgot all about Minic toys.
One never knows where ideas come from, I can remember when but not how, Checking the internet last December, looking for pre-WWII stuff I found a lot of two Minic trucks in mint condition for one and close to mint but partly rusted for the other one. I put a bid and won the auction. I was at this point only looking for trucks to go with the Dinky toys and other models of the same scale.
Alas I was trapped, the ghost of the 34M came back in my mind. There was one on eBay at the time but not being aware of the market value of this kind of models, I lost the auction by far.

In France the Minic line is undiscovered, Even discussing with British veterans of the collection, I hardly got the datas I was looking for, but here, as Minic's never been imported nothing is known and everybody's confused about pre or post war and one can find overrated value for post war items and on the contrary underrated prices for rarer pre-war versions such as the first series without the Shell tin can.

So this is the first truck I got, it's a regular pre-war issue with the Shell can on the running board, original white tyres hardened with the years, stone or beige colour for the cabin and
the current red trailer and eight wooden crates stamped London Minic Bombay. It's called articulated lorry with cases or rather, as originally : Mechanical horse and trailer with cases.

From the second Minic series, first issued in September 1936, this model will last long after the war.

Here a rarer version with a green trailer, cabs were interchangeable and all the the standard Minic colours were used but the trailers were mostly red (picture © by Vectis).