Gary Oxley

Designer

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Not many people in this business focus on one marque to specialise in, but that’s exactly what Gary Oxley has done. His love of classic Jaguar cars really took off when he bought a Corgi Jaguar MKII to represent his real car. Gary soon realised that this Corgi Toy was not a good representation of the MKII so after searching for a better model he finally came across white metal kits and built models. Gary was totally convinced that the way forward was to build your own kit and collect a wider range for his future collection.

Gary launched his Classic Jaguar Miniatures (CJM) range in 1996, and by this time there were already rumblings about the model car trade suffering from ever better diecast models from the Far East. He was starting from scratch, and  never planned for the range to become so wide, but realised that whilst he would have never make a living in this field, it was important to make sure that he was well known to collectors. He did not plan for it to become a full time business.

Subject ID: 82852

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Not many people in this business focus on one marque to specialise in, but that’s exactly what Gary Oxley has done. His love of classic Jaguar cars really took off when he bought a Corgi Jaguar MKII to represent his real car. Gary soon realised that this Corgi Toy was not a good representation of the MKII so after searching for a better model he finally came across white metal kits and built models. Gary was totally convinced that the way forward was to build your own kit and collect a wider range for his future collection.

Gary launched his Classic Jaguar Miniatures (CJM) range in 1996, and by this time there were already rumblings about the model car trade suffering from ever better diecast models from the Far East. He was starting from scratch, and  never planned for the range to become so wide, but realised that whilst he would have never make a living in this field, it was important to make sure that he was well known to collectors. He did not plan for it to become a full time business.

Gary’s first model was the 1928 Austin Swallow Sports 2 seater, an obvious choice to begin with, as this was Jaguar founder, Sir William Lyons’ first car, is linked to Jaguar, and shown in every good Jaguar reference book. As such it is a very important little car in the history of Jaguar Cars. Gary‘s choice of pattern maker turned out to be not the best for this car, although  they produced a very neat model that represented the Swallow exactly, thanks to Gary’s research on the car. With the help of Gil Mond from the Swallow registry as well, Gary also supplied all the drawings they needed. The model had full underbody chassis detail exactly as the real car, but the weakness in the design of the master and castings meant that the model would not travel in the post without arriving in painted pieces. In the end Gary passed the pattern over to SMTS which created a model he could safely post to arrive in one piece. Gary’s second Jaguar was the 420, which was made using an up dated pattern from Conquest Models.

Other key people that made Classic Jaguar Miniatures possible included Ian Birkinshaw of Pro Models who built for CJM and the Jaguar Model Club which Gary founded in 1996, and in the later stages helped Gary make the patterns in house. Gary holds Dave Buttress of CMA Mold Form in high regard, as being the best in the business with white metal or resin castings. He had tried others to cast for him, but CMA provided a reliable service, delivering exactly to Gary’s specification. Gary also gained much advice from Steve Overy and Mike Murray at Illustra Models in the later stages of CJM.

Because Gary had kits cast and models built for him, he has not had the need for premises although one room in his house became full of model related parts, kits, models and stock. From the very start the project was a challenge, with the pressures getting heavier as he progressed. Gary feels that without a sense of humour and an outlook of 'keep going no matter what' he would have given up a lot sooner.

Gary issued some resin models, and regards them as equally as important to him and the CJM range as the white metal releases and do include a mixture of both materials. As far as production quantities are concerned, His models were mostly limited to 200 castings, but some were much shorter runs, perhaps 50 built up models only.

Gary mainly sold to his own customers of whom many were from overseas. He finds it very satisfying that many of his models are in collections all over the world as far as Argentina, Australia, Japan and the USA, as well as the UK. Apart from Grand Prix Models, who sold some of his models, He mainly sold them himself via the Internet.

Gary produced all his own packaging, boxes, labels, printed bases, instruction sheets and sourced all the signatures personally from each driver, and is proud that these are genuine hand signed items.

Subject ID: 82852

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Subject ID: 82852

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