*2/9d in 1956 would have bought you one of several of the first issue of Corgi Toys. Or you could have spent *4/- and had one with a Mechanical motor which had a flywheel providing a continuation of the car's journey under its own steam. The trouble was that the continuation would be just a matter of inches and invariably resulted in the model crashing into the skirting board, a table leg or another model. The model was heavy and just a bit cumbersome. Whilst you could speed in the others, these versions just wouldn't do that, even if you did add oil to the little hole provided to help the gears do their work. The extra 25% or more just wasn't really worth it to many collectors and Corgi abandoned the idea sometime in 1959 with the models ceasing to appear on dealers' order lists in 1960.
Now the comparative scarcity of these models has made them eminently more collectible than the 'normal' issues and they're getting hard to find in reasonable condition and with a motor that still functions.
I have just added a section to my Catalogue to enable people to find them all quickly and see what colours they were sold in at your local toy shop.
These models were listed before but only under the make of vehicle so, if you didn't know which had M variations, they would be difficult to find!
The decision to end M model production had another interesting effect. There would have been a batch of models that had been painted already in the M issue colours and to which a simple tin baseplate would be fitted and the model popped in a normal issue box and sent off to the dealers and to be discovered by a lucky child in due course.
The table below summarises what I know about which may or may not be available.
(Updated 14/9/23 to add 200M colour)
On the left are the known issue colours for M models. On the right are colours I have seen for the non-mechanical issues as well as the normal issue colours for the non-mechanical models.
You'll see that the Standard Vanguard, Jaguar, Studebaker and Ford Thunderbird are particularly notable by their absence, as well as the Bedford CA Van in KLG Plugs form. The Studebaker is, curiously, known without a motor but with a 211S base in white. Maybe there were no batches of these latter models in the production line with paint when the decision was implemented.
The corollary to all this you may think would be some of the normal issues getting Mechanical bases from time to time. This appear not to have happened accidentally (or at least not made it out of the factory other than in an occasional worker's pocket) or may well have been picked up as presumably the M models didn't have the slope to encounter en route to the box to check that they ran straight and well! Another sort of scrutiny may have applied which would have immediately caught any such oddities, unfortunately, for us now!
Only the Riley Pathfinder appears in both guises in both colours and I assume that the 205M in red was a deliberate choice for some reason.
* our currency prior to decimalisation in 1971 had pounds, shillings and pence. There were 12 pennies in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound. Prices like 4 shillings would be written 4/- and 2 shillings and 6 pence as 2/6d. The d stood for the Latin denarius, vaguely meaning penny. It may also be omitted so that 2/6 would also be commonly used. 1/2 would be 1 shilling and 2 pence, not a half.
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