Land Rover colours

I think I have finally completed the range of #438 Land Rovers. They started with the dark green and brown ones which are by far the most common. Red appeared in Circus sets with a blue canopy and in the Ferrari Racing Set GS17 with a white canopy. (Now, there is a yellow one that appears from time to time but I have never been able to capture one as prices simply rocket. I think, though, that this is not a #438 but a version of #416S so I'll deal with that later!)

1968 (although I could swear it was a lot later!) saw it in a different shade of green with black camouflage stripes for a Daktari Gift Set GS7 and the same set of stripes appeared on a white one for the Lions of Longleat Gift Set GS8. Each of these had a very long life and can be found with a variety of different types of wheel.

Also appearing very late and more freqently found with Whizzwheels is the nice blue version that came as part of the Corgi Pony Club Gift Set. The Daktari Land Rover was first shown in the 1967 catalogue as 'available later' and in the white colour used for Longleat! In the 1969 catalogue it is in green and the Longleat version in white is advertised as well as the blue version.

The last version is, I think, the blue-green metallic one. That's not in any of the catalogues I've seen but it may have just come into production without fanfair in 1969 after the catalogue was printed as that clearly indicates the darker green as being the model version. This also succumbed to Whizzwheels but before that happened there is an edition with fluted, cast wheels. They are not expensive at the moment, presumably because there were many Land Rovers sold even in the later days but I may be wrong and it is simply a case of people thinking it is just another, ubiquitous model!

I also have white and black Black List versions which, of course, were never issued but look nice.

In a future post I will look at the military and service versions as well and then there'll be the old 406 versions to deal with!