Mini Mistakes

Here is something a little different! It's a 227 Morris Mini-Cooper body on a 226 Morris Mini-Minor base. I bought it for my friend and Corgi collector, Andi, who lives abroad, where the seller wasn't keen to post stuff to. Having it delivered to me here in the UK also gave me the chance to take a closer look at it. It could, of course, have simply been something someone had made from almost any old 226 using a drill and just a Code 3 of not really of great interest. However the paint on the inside of the holes and around the edges is untouched and so this is most likely to have been mistake at the Corgi factory.

I can imagine how a rack of 227 bodies could have been sent to the painting area and a dose of 226 lilac-blue was applied instead of the darker shade of 227 blue or even primrose. At a pinch, I can just about imagine how these blue 227 bodies found themselves further down the production line and being attached to 226 bases. More difficult might be understanding how these got past Quality Control unless you remember that there wasn't a great deal of either consistent quality or control going on! Or maybe they didn't get any further, this one and a few others finding their way into workers' pockets and back home for the kids to play with.

Clearly, how this one reached freedom outside the factory walls in or around 1966 we shall never know but it certainly didn't get played with and is as unmarked as if it had remained in the pocket of a pair of overalls ever after. The rivets are particularly clean and very new-looking. I did have my suspicions that these may have been replacements but the design and imprint is identical to others I have seen and they really do look like Corgi factory rivets.

One odd thing about this model is the fact that the body is a Type 1, the first casting, whereas the cast wheel base is the latest casting used and one might have expected anything with cast wheels to have had the Type II body. I have seen, however, this combination before so it's probably better to say that it's not so much odd but a little less common.

My friend is quite keen to have this and put some jewels in the holes so that it looks like a 227 in the 226 blue. I've cautioned him, though, that to do the job properly would require bezels or metal holder for the jewels and inserting those would inevitably damage the paint and destroy the model's provenance. He might as well buy any old 226 and drill a couple of holes and achieve the same end result. OK, finding a Type 1 body with cast wheels as clean as these isn't that easy but it would be preferable to spoiling something which someone might like to have as it stands for their collection of Corgi Mini mistakes.

As it happens, I have the reverse 'factory mistake' in the form of a 226 Morris Mini-Minor body on a 227 Morris Mini-Minor base. I have suggested that, instead of sending them to him for jewel insertion, I put the pair up for sale and see if anyone's interested. I would value each of them at around £250 so I'll be asking £350 for the two. I guess that will bring howls of protest from some quarters but a single decent and unmarked, somewhat scarce normal Mini in exceptional condition would sell for £60 and something like this factory error must be worth at least three or four times as much.

The 226 body / 227 base model is in the earlier pale blue rather than the lilac-blue of my friend's 227/226 model so the colours don't match and the base styles are some years apart but they still make an interesting pair.

While I'm at it, here's another nice pair that I have available at a similar price, this time Austin Seven bodies on Morris Mini-Minor and Morris Mini-Cooper bases! Oh, what fun you can have with Corgi Minis!