AutoCult is back again this month with another five unique pieces.  Our personal favorite and in our opinion the weirdest of the bunch by far is the 1:43 1938 Horch 853 T. Lepil.  You can read more on this model below.  All replicas shown here should be available by mid September at your favorite retailer.

Berkeley T60 1960
LMX Sirex 1979
Wikov 35 Kapka 1931
Volvo L3314 1961

About the Horch 853 T. Lepil…  “Apparently a high-ranking German commander had to leave his car behind in the Czechoslovakian region during the chaos of the last days of World War II. This luxury car was a Horch Typ 853, the convertible version of the 1935-presented vehicle series 850. It was fitted with an eight-cylinder straight-type engine, which had a performance of 100 hp.  In the course of the political reorganization of Czechoslovakia for the integration into the communist Soviet Union after World War II, everything from Germany was branded as “bad” or “evil”. In 1945 the same was true for the left-behind luxury convertible. However its new owners were well aware that the Horch was a rare fortune and thought long and hard about how to tap the full potential out of the powerful car. The Czechoslovakian renowned body maker T. Lepil, known for his body designs for famous Czech carmakers, created a complete new body for the convertible, which was especially tailored for its new use as a future fire engine. Lepil had no regard for the existing bodywork of the Horch-Designers and cut off the whole car trunk, replaced the large doors with two smaller ones on each side, to submit a separate entry to the back of the car. Due to this massive alternation of the rear, the car got a strung-out bed, which offered enough space for water hoses and other fire fighting equipment. The roof was a fully glazed and covered the whole passenger compartment and the trunk.”

Product# 12006 / 03013 / 05016 / 04011 / 08007