The Corgi Model Club get airborne and a little bronzed in the sun.

 

Here is the latest issue from The Corgi Model Club. It's the Ford Thames Airborne Caravan, originally #420 in the catalogue, issued in February 1962 and costing 6/6d. 

I think you will agree that there is one very obvious problem with this one and that's the colour. It was issued in shades of olive green, much like the Bentley Continental and had the production people just used some of the Bentley paint I think all would have been well. Instead something odd has happened and we have this weird gold colour for the bottom half. Now this may be just a batch that has been affected and others are looking as they should but this is slightly disappointing.

The top half, though, is spot-on. There were many shades during the four years that this model was available from the shops but none were like this.

Otherwise, this is an excellent model and very well replicates all the small details of the 1962 issue, including all the little features inside. The doors are actually very well engineered and a great improvement on many originals, opening and closing very smoothly and staying shut too.

Once more, the Model Club have opted to produce a particularly scarce version of a model, although I suspect they didn't realise that this time. This has free-spinning wheels whereas you'll have quite a hard job find one of the originals like that. Of the 40 or 50 I spotted for sale just before writing this, just two had the later style of wheel. All the others had fixed wheels.

The rear doors on my old example go right back to form a 180° angle, rather more (and a lot looser) than the re-issue.

No doubt we shall see in the Hornby Hobbies catalogue the same model in blue and cream and plum and pale pink, the other two colours that this was issued in and which, incidentally, are more numerous in having free-spinning wheels, being mostly a later issue to the green one.

The box is a faithful copy of all that can be copied from the original and it has a fine weight and texture. It is a little shiny, as they all are and the font used for the numerals is still wrong. These are minor niggles, that's all. It was never a model I rushed out to buy at the time so not one of my favourites that I was looking forward to seeing refreshed. For those who do like it, however, it's a nice copy. Just that colour in some lights . . . maybe keep it in the shade!