BBR history
The name B.B.R. is taken from the names of the company founders who started this fantastic adventure more than 20 years ago; Balestrini, Barberis and Reali. Of the three founders only two remain today, as Barberis returned to his original profession as a dentist.
B.B.R. began in a small room in Saronno, northern Italy, where inspiration, imagination and a passion for the automobile came together to create what we are proud to call our "miniature masterpieces".
Alberto Balestrini shows considerable manual aptitude and as a passionate collector of the cars of Ken Tyrrell he soon gained a deserved reputation as a highly skilled modeller, using sheet metal and plaster to create, in miniature, the English cars which dominated F1 in the early 1970s.
Nando Reali has the business brain and represents the commercial side of a company that, from the early days with the Styling Range of models, has been met with approval and support among the ever growing group of 'special' model collectors.
Model of the year
The order book kept growing and the original workshop soon became too small to accommodate the increasing number of benches where the models were stacked ready for delivery, while the tools used and the working areas were starting to look more like the racing departments of famous car manufacturers every day.
BBR's name started to become well known overseas too and it is from one of these foreign countries that the most valuable acknowledgements of our work started to arrive in Saronno, when the glamorous German magazine "Model Fan" selected us for their "Modell des Jahres" (Model of the Year). This confirms that the BBR marque is a guarantee of quality and accuracy in the production of 1:43rd scale model cars.
With success comes responsibility and BBR soon found itself working with some of the World's most famous car manufacturers in the reproduction of street and race cars in miniature.
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