[Sticky] Off the Shelf: Thomas Roschmann, the Collector Who Makes the Models Nobody Else Will (Part I)

There are collectors who spend years looking for the model nobody else seems to have. Thomas Roschmann took that impulse a considerable step further. When the models he wanted didn’t exist, he eventually built Autocult, a company dedicated to making them.

For more than a decade, AutoCult has occupied one of the more unusual corners of the model car world. Its catalog can sometimes feel less like a conventional model range than an automotive history book brought to life in three dimensions. Streamliners. Prototypes. Microcars. Forgotten marques. Experimental vehicles. Campers. Racing cars. Machines that existed only briefly, or perhaps only on a drawing board. Vehicles that can prompt even a knowledgeable collector to look at a new release and ask, “What on earth is that?”

(Since 2015, autocult-models.de has featured replicas of unusual vehicles)

For Thomas, that question is almost the point. The founder of AutoCult is a collector himself, but not the kind who can easily summarize his collection by scale, marque, country, or era. Ask him what he collects and the answer is essentially whatever catches his interest. It might be an expensive scale model, an old tin toy, a children’s book with an appealing Volkswagen illustration on the cover, or even an original manufacturing artifact from the automobile industry.

His own one-sentence description of the collection may be the most accurate. “A summary of models nobody understands—except me!” he shares.

That eclectic curiosity is also one of the keys to understanding AutoCult. Thomas did not create a model company and then develop an interest in obscure automotive history. The company grew from a fascination that had been forming almost from the time he could recognize one car from another.

It Started Before He Could Say the Names

Thomas’ parents told him that his interest in cars appeared before he could properly speak German.

(Thomas and his mother in 1968)

He couldn’t pronounce Mercedes-Benz, but he had his own word for one. Volkswagen had another. Whatever he called them, he could distinguish between them.

One of the first specific automobiles he remembers seeing from the back seat of his parents’ car was a Porsche 911 Targa. The image stayed with him. So did the Porsche 911 itself, which became a lifelong fascination.

His earliest model collecting memories involve Matchbox Models of Yesteryear and Carrera Universal 1:32 slot cars. Christmas often meant another Carrera car, and rather than simply scattering them among his toys, Thomas remembers displaying the slot cars in a showcase.

A Schuco Porsche 911 in 1:66 became one of the first models he considered truly special.

“The shape of a Porsche 911 was fascinating for me,” he says.

Even as a boy, there was already a distinction between toys and models in his mind. SIKU, Matchbox, and Schuco 1:66 cars were generally his “toy cars.” Bburago 1:24 models, Models of Yesteryear, and Carrera Universal racers belonged more clearly to the collecting side.

That didn’t mean the toys were abused. Thomas’ parents later told him that after playing with his cars outside, he would give them a car washing before returning them to their box.

There was also an unusual automotive education taking place in the family. Thomas’ dad drove nearly 50,000 miles a year and replaced his car roughly every year and a half. Young Thomas became an unofficial participant in the ordering process. He studied the brochures carefully, learned the available options and advised his father about what he ought to add to the next car.

The result, Thomas recalls with some satisfaction, was that the family generally had very well-equipped automobiles, first mostly Fiats and later BMWs.

That habit of poring over specifications and noticing the details that made one vehicle different from another sounds, in retrospect, remarkably appropriate for what came later.

Still a “Big Old Child”

Like many collectors, Thomas eased away from models for a few teenage years when other interests took over. But cars never really disappeared.

His professional life brought him back into the orbit of models quickly. At about 20 he was working with Playmobil, and a business relationship with Herpa eventually led to Thomas joining Herpa as a junior product manager. Schuco would also become part of his career.

Through it all he continued collecting, although never according to a strict master plan. Even today, Thomas resists the idea that he has evolved into what one might call a serious adult collector. “I’m still a big-old-child,” he says.

He still enjoys playing with Carrera slot cars. He changes the way his models are displayed from year to year. He reads about obscure corners of automotive history because he finds them interesting, not because they fit neatly into a collecting category.

That lack of specialization is important. Thomas does not collect only 1:43 scale. He doesn’t restrict himself to German cars, postwar cars, sports cars, prototypes, or even model cars. If it relates to automotive history and makes him curious, it has a chance.

One example is an old production piece from a former automotive supplier. He has the coining die used to make the Ford “world ball” emblem for actual cars. That interests him just as much as something created specifically for a display case.

Then there is LEGO. For one birthday Thomas received a LEGO Porsche 911. Later, his family gave him a lighting kit so the completed model could have functioning front and rear lights.

Everyone in the family knows about the Porsche fixation. And unlike many childhood automotive dreams, Thomas eventually fulfilled this one at full scale. He owns a Porsche 911.

There are models connected to that personal history as well. Thomas has miniature versions of almost every real automobile he has owned. A few remain elusive because no suitable model exists, particularly some of his more recent vehicles and camping vehicles.

He jokes that perhaps, once retired, he will have to make those himself with a 3-D printer.

Even with someone who owns prototypes, rare tin toys, and production artifacts, there is an appealing lack of trophy hunting in Thomas’ collecting. Ask about the rarest model he has acquired and he hesitates. Ask whether he has gone to extraordinary lengths to obtain something and the answer is no.

“I’m not a hunter,” he explains. “I’m collecting things I like.” That may be the simplest definition of his collection.

Finding the Story

Thomas says his attraction to lesser-known cars developed gradually. He would read something interesting or encounter a vehicle in a museum and want to know more. One discovery led to another, and the automobile became a doorway into the story surrounding it.

He gives the example of rocket-powered cars. Near his hometown is the Hermann Oberth Museum, devoted to the pioneering rocket scientist whose work crossed some of the most consequential and complicated periods of 20th-century history. Thomas’ connection with people at the museum led him deeper into the subject and ultimately contributed to the Heylandt appearing in the AutoCult collection. Before that, Thomas says, he had never even heard of a Heylandt. (You can read more about the Heylandt here)

(The Oberth Space Travel Museum in Feucht, Germany)

That discovery process became familiar. Find something unexpected, uncover the history, and suddenly the obscure vehicle becomes difficult to forget. And when he considers what matters in a great model, historical importance comes before almost everything else. History, story, and rarity lead his list, followed by craftsmanship, proportions, and quality.

(The inspiration for the 2021 Memminger Roadster model)

That helps explain why Thomas describes himself as some combination of collector, curator, and automotive historian. It also explains the company he eventually created.

“Why Not Make Models in a Market Niche?”

Years before AutoCult existed, Thomas already had ideas about the kind of models he believed companies should be making.

Working for established manufacturers gave him an inside view of the model business, but it also created frustration. Competition among mainstream manufacturers was intense. Thomas wondered why companies needed to continue fighting over many of the same subjects. “Why not make models in a market niche?” he remembers thinking.

His ideas didn’t find much support. Thomas believed his former employers were making the wrong strategic decisions, while his bosses did not share his conviction that an unconventional range could become a viable business.

Eventually, the desire to be independent and to actually put his ideas into practice became stronger than the security of remaining an employee. It was a considerable risk. But Thomas had identified something he believed was missing from the industry… not simply more models, but models that told stories no one else was telling. Especially stories involving companies that had disappeared. “That is car history nobody is telling,” he says. “We do it with AutoCult now.”

The automobile that turned the idea into something tangible was the Schlörwagen. Also known as the Göttingen Egg, the dramatically aerodynamic experimental German automobile looked like exactly the kind of subject a conventional manufacturer might consider too obscure. To Thomas it was precisely the opposite. It became AutoCult’s first model.

More followed. The Alamagny. Aero Minor. Petermax Müller record car. Goliath streamliner. Glasspar. Denzel. DAF. Buckle Dart. Cars with familiar badges but unfamiliar bodies, and others whose names sent collectors directly to the reference books, or increasingly, to Google. AutoCult had found its identity.

“Mainstream is possible for everybody,” Thomas says. “But special things?” For those, he believes, it helps to have what he jokingly calls a “special mental tic.” He had that from the beginning.

A Model Has to Earn Its Place

Obscure alone, however, is not enough. That distinction matters because AutoCult’s reputation could create the impression that almost anything sufficiently strange qualifies for production. Thomas says the decision is much more complicated.

Sometimes a design catches his attention. Sometimes it is an unexpected engineering solution. Sometimes it is a story attached to a familiar or completely forgotten marque.

The Eugen Maier automobile, for example, fascinated him because of features incorporated into the car that seemed remarkably advanced for their time, including heated seats and cornering lights. Thomas himself learned things while researching it.

Historical significance and available documentation are among the most important criteria.

Commercial viability matters too, although AutoCult approaches it differently from companies that announce proposed models and then determine whether enough orders exist to proceed.

AutoCult makes the decision. Then it makes the model.

Collector suggestions can influence that process, and a number of AutoCult releases originated with ideas submitted by enthusiasts. But Thomas also knows the difference between a compelling historical subject and the model one collector happens to need to fill a gap in his display case. “Not every model makes sense in our philosophy,” he says.

(The Autocult team in 2025)

Occasionally AutoCult knowingly produces something Thomas believes will appeal to a relatively small audience simply because the vehicle deserves to be documented. He considers two or three such projects a year entirely acceptable. They may take years to sell through, but that doesn’t necessarily make them mistakes. They make the AutoCult collection more interesting.

That attitude also underscores the difference between Thomas the collector and Thomas the businessman. The two, he insists, are separate. If he made AutoCult’s production decisions purely as a collector, he jokes, the company “would have been bankrupt within three months.”

There are plenty of models he personally loves that AutoCult will never produce, either because they do not fit the philosophy or because the commercial prospects simply make no sense. The collector can want them. The manufacturer has to say no.

(Continued with Part II)