LESLIE SMITH was one half of the Lesney partnership, a brand name embossed on the chassis of millions of die-cast Matchbox toy cars and the childhood memories of thousands. Lesney was an amalgam of the names of Leslie and Rodney Smith. They were not related, but had been school friends and had served together during the Second World War in the Royal Navy. Together they set up an industry which thrived worldwide.

Leslie Charles Smith had been an export buyer before joining the Navy as a signals rating in 1940. He was later commissioned and served at Dieppe and on D-Day in a motor torpedo boat.

After the war he took a job with a carpet firm, but he also invested in a side venture with his friend, who worked for a die-casting company in Enfield. They pooled savings of £600 to buy an old metal press from Rodney’s employers, and Lesney Products began in The Rifleman, an abandoned pub in Tottenham.

They dealt chiefly with zinc, casting ceiling hooks and toy cap-guns. They made engine parts and window blades for Ford and Vauxhall, and components for Plessey and AC Delta. They eventually rented factory floor space in Hackney. Then, with Britain’s involvement in the Korean War, the Government commandeered all available zinc, and it seemed that the fledgling firm had nowhere to go.

Rodney Smith left the firm, eventually emigrating to Australia. In his place came Jack Odell, a boyhood friend who had been forbidden by his local council from die-casting in his own home. His first experiment had been a tiny steamroller, created for his daughter, who was bound by school rules not to take in any toy that could not fit into a matchbox. With Odell’s arrival, Lesney gained a highly inventive engineer with a love of model-making.

When restrictions on zinc were lifted in 1952, the pair were able to put an earlier idea into production. A miniature state coach, struck for the Festival of Britain in 1951, was gilded and released for the Coronation in 1953. A million were sold.

Smith and Odell made other toys to fill in time at the end of production runs. The first four models were construction vehicles: a dumper, a road roller, a Massey Harris tractor and a cement mixer. The die-cast toy market was not an open field. Dinky, a division of Meccano, had been the market leader before the war and the only one to survive it. Now there were other competitors: Tekno of Denmark and Solido of France were both producing more detailed creations. Smith and Odell entered the market with quality craftsmanship, wide choice and pocket-money prices.

Matchbox cars were pressed in earnest from 1953 onwards. In 1956 Lesney began the Models of Yesteryear series, 1/46 classic car models which allowed Odell to indulge his love of detail: dashboards, opening doors and bonnets and Perspex windows.

Matchbox was phenomenally successful, and Lesney Products grew rapidly between the mid-1950s and 1969. Smith took a particular interest in labour relations, which were among the best in the country. Faced with the fact that women made the best toymakers, but had to get their children to and from school, he organised a convoy of double-decker buses to enable every worker to pick up their children. Lesney’s women produced a million Matchbox toys a day.

The company was listed in 1960 in an offer that was oversubscribed 15 times, and made Smith and Odell millionaires. While Odell was attached to the factory floor, Smith was the marketeer. He travelled the world, securing the company’s immediate future with a well-calculated foray into the US in 1956 with the help of his friend and agent Fred Bronner. The size of Matchbox cars — able to be clutched by small hands — made them unique. And unlike American toy vehicles, which tended to reflect only America, Matchbox toys acknowledged the whole world. By the 1960s Matchbox cars were being sold in such toy- making powerhouses as Hong Kong and Japan. The company grew to 13 factories in Homerton, Hackney, Leyton, Harold Hill, Abbey Wood and Peterborough, with a staff of 6,000.

Nevertheless, by 1969 Lesney was being challenged by Corgi, Bluebird, the US brand Bayco and, above all, Hot Wheels, from Mattel, whose range of cars was not aimed at loving collectors, but could reach high speeds, travel many metres with the slightest push and loop the loop on a flexible track.

Matchbox responded with its Superfast range of sports cars and dragsters, and tested them exhaustively against their rivals on the factory floor at Homerton, before marketing them with an own-brand racetrack.

In the end the cost of the worldwide research required to ensure the accuracy of toys which were to be sold at just £1.20 apiece became unsustainable in the face of Mattel’s fantasy cars, which did not adhere to road designs.

Smith fought against an inevitable relocation to the Far East. He hated the idea of cutting British jobs and was unconvinced that a factory in Hong Kong, Macau or Bangkok could meet his standards of quality. When the move was made, it was already too late. Matchbox was sold to Universal Toys in 1982, Smith staying with the company until the end. The brand is now held by Mattel.

Smith continued active after leaving Lesney. He was chairman of the board of governors for two North London schools, taking St Paul’s at Winchmore Hill from deep debt to £500,000 in trust.

He was a passionate yachtsman who would squeeze a 200-mile race into a weekend. He gave a talk last year to collectors and former employees at Hackney Museum when it held the exhibition Matchbox Memories. He had been appointed OBE in 1968.

His wife Nancy died in 1969. He is survived by two sons and a daughter.

Leslie Smith, founder of Lesney Products, was born on March 6, 1918. He died on May 30, 2005, aged 87.