1962 was a good summer for fans of the Ford Thunderbird. Corgi had issued the Hard Top and Convertible 'S' upgrades with suspension and new colours in June and in July they had another go at the Convertible and added a strange-looking roof, stickers and a driver to a new issue #430 called a Bermuda Taxi.
It would have been a relatively inexpensive set of changes at the time and I am sure the same consideration was persuasive when deciding on this month's release from the Corgi Model Club. It's a cheerful model and brightened up a gloomy November morning when it arrived.
You'll see some additional packing with this one - a quite solid bit of card protecting one end, as well as the now familiar chunks of white foam plastic. The cars are also now being wrapped in thin white paper. I can only assume that some people have complained about some scuff marks on unprotected models that allowed a little movement in the past. It's a good idea but I do have to say that in the old days we had the box, the car and a membership certificate and that was it in the vast majority of cases!
It is another excellent reproduction all round. I don't have my original to hand to make comparison photographs but everything is pretty much as for the re-issue of 215S which you can refer to.
The additions will be the roof, stickers and the driver. The stickers are not stickers so don't try to peel them off as you could with an original model. Whilst I appreciate that these transfers, or maybe they are produced as part of an advanced printing process now, look good and will be cheaper to produce than separate items which then have to be stuck on, and this is not like other issues where we were given the stickers on a sheet to apply as and where we wanted, I would have preferred stickers to make this that much closer to the old #430.
The driver is the one I am familiar with in these models. I have encountered, and written about, another with bigger yellow boots and one or two other differences but I have no idea if that one ever appeared in an original #430 or was something a parts firm had created. This chap looks fatter than I remember the original being but I really cannot be sure about that.
As always, the box is very shiny and I still have an issue with some of the fonts used but the main appearance is very good.
As something to keep us amused for a while this is fine but you know, and I am sure the Club knows, that we are really holding our breath for the much more exciting things due in the next two or three months!
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