After a long time searching, I've finally found a purple Toyota 2000GT #375 at a reasonable price. These are quite scarce and even the more easily found blue version isn't that common. Apart from the annoying wheels, these are very good-looking models and the paintwork glorious in these totally unrealistic but still delightful bright, mirror finishes.
This was only produced for a couple of years, the cast being initially made for the James Bond #336 model. In fact, it carried on being used for this for many years afterwards with lots of re-issues during the China days.
The purple and blue editions, though, are worth getting - nice, simple models with the pretty jewelled lights, unusually retained at the back too! Normally the addition of Whizzwheels meant that things like jewels were replaced with paint or blobs of plastic or just ignored completely.
Even something similar to the James Bond flag is retained, albeit now as a bizarre red aerial! They made a nice cream interior for the #375 model and, of course, you don't need to worry about the boot not closing.
When putting my catalogue together, I hadn't needed a 'Japanese' section because there was only the one model issued during the pre-Whizzwheels era and that was the James Bond version so I could list that under the Film & TV heading. There simply were not many Japanese cars on the road in the 1960s.
You might have seen an early Corolla in the later part of the decade but it was really the 1970s before you'd see more than one or two, when the Datsuns started to sell here. So for the Whizzwheels part I did need a Japanese section, not just for the Toyota but also for the lovely Datsun 240Z models.
As far as I can tell, there was never a Toyota 2000GT produced in convertible mode. They were manufactured as a sloping back model, similar in side view to the later Jaguar E Types. This one was produced for the film, though, and I expect one or two others were created by specialist collectors too.
No comments:
Post a Comment