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 Having won a 125cc and a 250cc world road racing championship and several Isle of Man TT's Tarquino Provini's race career tragically ended when he broke his back at the 1965 Isle of Man TT.

He decided to produce plastic kits of the bikes he and his fellow competitors had raced and launched the Protar range of 1/9 scale kits which gained a reputation for being a little difficult to build but could be built into superb accurate models by those who took the time to finish them.

The range was very broad and as well as many road race bikes like the 125cc Mondial that Provini had ridden to win the world championship, the Moto Guzzi V8, 500cc Gilera, 500cc MV Agustas and Agostini's first works 500cc Yamaha it also included a 360cc Greeves Challenger and the only model produced so far of the Jawa 2 valve speedway bike so well known to speedway fans worldwide. Protar also made 1/12 and 1/24 scale car kits as well as a powerboat and some racing bicycles.

Following the death of Provini in 2005 the business was taken over by Italeri and a range of ready built classic road and race bikes as well as a modern MotoGP bikes was released in 1/22 scale but they weren't widely available in the UK and have now been discontinued. Italeri continue to release some of the old 1/9 scale plastic kits giving collectors a second chance to build models of some important classic bikes which may never be modelled again.