June 1962 brought three new American cars to your local Corgi toy shop. The two Ford Thunderbirds' bodies had been around since March 1959 and now finally get the S treatment. New paint, suspension and an interior for the hard top and a driver for the convertible.
The dark metallic grey is a super colour that never is to be seen again. It suits this car well and, whilst the red roof seems a little odd at first, it is an improvement on the Mechanical Ford's pink and plack scheme. This is a good-looking model, one of my favourites. It is always with free spinning wheels and a lemon plastic interior.
Putting suspension on the convertible model, however, didn't work as well, the car now seemingly floating some several inches higher than it ought to be. Wherever you see a Thunderbird from this era it is pretty much on the ground and you wonder how on Earth it would cope with sleeping policemen and those high kerbs in car parks.
The Corgi Model Club have produced a fine reproduction of the 215S model. The other problem for me with this model is the driver. The character is simply too tall, his head well above the windscreen and he just looks silly, not a good look in a car like this in the real world!
The other June arrival coincides with the latest Corgi Model Club issue too - the lovely 237 Oldsmobile Super 80, appearing first in County Police Patrol livery. It's a simple model with no opening features, just suspension and free-spinning wheels, an amber beacon on the roof and stickers on the sides.
My father had one of the 1:1 scale versions
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