Tintin 1/24 Model Car 29911 – La 2 CV Cassée – Les Bijoux de la Castafiore – First Edition

Author: Hergé & Editions Moulinsart
Manufacturer: Editions Moulinsart / Tintinimaginatio
Format: 1/24 scale model car on display plinth with illustrated diorama and clear acetate case
Condition: Brand new in original packaging

Description:

From the official Les Voitures de Tintin collection, this substantial 1/24 scale model of La 2 CV Cassée, reference 29911, recreates the battered green Citroën 2 CV associated with Thomson and Thompson in Hergé’s Les Bijoux de la Castafiore (The Castafiore Emerald).

The model captures the car after its accident, with the front bodywork dramatically crumpled and the bonnet forced upwards. One of the detectives remains seated inside while the other figures around the vehicle complete the comic scene. The car is presented on its original display plinth beneath a clear acetate case, against a monochrome architectural background derived from Hergé’s artwork.

The official Tintin archive identifies this as number 11 in the 1/24 vehicle collection and records that, while working on Les Bijoux de la Castafiore in 1962, Hergé drew upon the Belgian-built Citroën 2 CV. The archive also notes the important contribution of Hergé’s collaborator Roger Leloup, who owned an ageing 2 CV AZL and reproduced it with considerable precision to assist Hergé.

The model reproduces the famous damaged 2 CV exactly as it appears in the album, where Thomson and Thompson’s already accident-prone motoring reaches another memorable conclusion. The car is shown embedded into another vehicle, leaving the front end spectacularly distorted. Contemporary descriptions of the official Moulinsart issue consistently identify it as La 2 CV cassée des Dupondt, number 11 in the series.

Reference: 29911
Scale: 1/24
Model: La 2 CV Cassée
Album: Les Bijoux de la Castafiore
Vehicle: Citroën 2 CV
Colour: Pale green
Presentation: Display plinth with illustrated diorama and clear acetate case
Packaging: Original grey and white outer box, with very minor shelf-wear
Documentation: Original explanatory booklet
Condition: Brand new in original packaging
EAN: 2991100000008

La 2 CV Cassée: A Brief Account

The battered 2 CV is one of the more memorable comic vehicles in Les Bijoux de la Castafiore.

Thomson and Thompson are closely associated with the Citroën 2 CV throughout the later Tintin albums, and Hergé repeatedly uses the humble little car as a vehicle for physical comedy. In The Castafiore Emerald, their already dubious motoring ability culminates in the car being driven into the back of the television crew’s vehicle, leaving the front end badly crushed.

The visual joke is particularly effective because the 2 CV was, by the early 1960s, one of the most familiar and modest cars on European roads. Hergé took an immediately recognisable everyday vehicle and placed it at the centre of an absurd accident involving two detectives whose confidence consistently exceeds their competence.

The official Tintin archive states that Hergé knew the Brussels production of Citroën well and was familiar with the extraordinary popularity of the 2 CV. It further records that Roger Leloup, one of Hergé’s collaborators, owned an old 2 CV AZL and helped reproduce the vehicle accurately for the album.

The Citroën 2 CV

The Citroën 2 CV was first unveiled publicly at the Paris Motor Show in 1948 and went on to become one of the most recognisable European cars of the twentieth century.

Its deliberately simple engineering, lightweight construction and extraordinary suspension were intended to provide inexpensive and practical transport for rural and working motorists. What initially appeared unconventional soon became one of Citroën’s greatest commercial successes.

By the time Hergé was drawing Les Bijoux de la Castafiore in 1962, the 2 CV had already become deeply embedded in everyday European life. That familiarity was central to the joke: Thomson and Thompson are not travelling in an exotic or glamorous automobile, but in an ordinary car rendered extraordinary by their own incompetence.

The official Tintin vehicle chronology distinguishes between the earlier 2 CV used by the detectives in L’Affaire Tournesol and this later damaged 2 CV from Les Bijoux de la Castafiore. Both were selected for reproduction in the 1/24 collection, underlining how closely the vehicle had become associated with the pair.

Les Bijoux de la Castafiore: A Brief Account

Les Bijoux de la Castafiore is one of the most unusual Tintin adventures.

Rather than sending Tintin across the world, Hergé keeps almost the entire narrative at Marlinspike Hall. Bianca Castafiore arrives with her entourage, journalists appear, a television crew follows, strange noises disturb the house and Castafiore’s emerald apparently disappears.

The album deliberately plays with the conventions of the detective story. Suspicion falls upon various characters, misunderstandings multiply, and apparently significant clues repeatedly prove misleading. The result is one of Hergé’s most sophisticated exercises in comic timing and narrative misdirection.

The damaged 2 CV belongs perfectly within that structure. It contributes to the album’s accumulation of comic incidents while also reinforcing one of the longest-running jokes in the series: Thomson and Thompson’s ability to turn even ordinary police work into chaos.

Thomson and Thompson and the 2 CV

The Citroën 2 CV is particularly well suited to Thomson and Thompson.

Their formal dress, black suits and bowler hats contrast comically with the diminutive utilitarian car. Hergé exploits that visual mismatch repeatedly, using the car both as transport and as a means of accentuating the detectives’ physical awkwardness.

The pair’s accident in The Castafiore Emerald is therefore more than a one-off joke. It forms part of a broader visual tradition in which the detectives’ motor vehicles almost inevitably become involved in mishaps.

The model reproduces that humour particularly effectively because the damage is integral to the design. The raised bonnet, distorted front wings and collapsed nose immediately communicate what has happened before one even identifies the album.

Hergé, Roger Leloup and Automotive Detail

By the 1960s, Hergé Studios had developed an increasingly sophisticated research process for vehicles, architecture and machinery.

Roger Leloup, later famous as the creator of Yoko Tsuno, worked at the studio and became especially valuable when mechanical subjects required precise rendering. The official Tintin archive specifically credits Leloup’s ownership of a 2 CV AZL as useful reference material for Hergé during preparation of Les Bijoux de la Castafiore. Tintin

This helps explain the convincing appearance of the car in the album. Even when Hergé subjects a vehicle to extreme comic damage, the underlying form remains recognisable and mechanically credible.

That combination of documentary observation and comic exaggeration is one of the strengths of the mature ligne claire style.

The 1/24 Moulinsart Model

The larger 1/24 Les Voitures de Tintin series is particularly effective for this subject because the damaged bodywork is central to the appeal of the model.

At this scale, the crumpled bonnet, distorted front structure, wheels, glazing and figure within the car can all be appreciated clearly. The illustrated background completes the three-dimensional recreation of the album scene.

The model was issued as number 11 in the series. Examples offered through the specialist collector market confirm the 1/24 scale, original display case and accompanying booklet as the standard presentation for the issue.

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Cataloguer: Daniel Hornsey

Daniel Hornsey has specialised in fine and rare books, maps, ephemera, artworks and collectors’ items for over thirty years. Hornseys was established in 1976 and, in its fiftieth year, continues to research and catalogue every item individually from its gallery and bookshop in Ripon, North Yorkshire.