In April 1959 the strange little Jeep FC-150 appears. FC stands for 'Forward Control' which I can only guess refers to the driver sitting above the front axle and the engine mounted much further back than had been the case for most trucks and cars previously with their long bonnets. It helped the truck's manoeuvrability and had good traction for climbing. It was a 4-wheel drive vehicle but not something that was common on UK roads so an odd model to issue.
Corgi didn't supply a hood with early models, much as they didn't with the first Land Rovers and they were all light blue. Although there was not much in the catalogue to attach, it did have the usual tin hook so there was some good play value in filling the back with stuff and towing a trailer.
The spare was mounted in such a way that you couldn't actually get at it!
To me the casting is a little different to most other Corgis, The door outline, for example is raised rather than inset and the base design is unusual. I wondered whether they had to use a different method for this one for some reason but it may just have been one of those things.
The model did stay in the dealers' order lists until 1965 and is one of the few models which can be found with smooth wheels, fixed shaped wheels and free-spinning wheels. The last, shown above on a model I have just acquired, are quite scarce and would have required a different piece of equipment for the wheels to be fitted. Instead of having a sort of press which pushed the wheels on to the axle the ladies would now be operating some device which produced the enlarged radius dome to keep the wheel in place.
I cannot quickly think of another model car or truck that had no interior or suspension but which had all three wheel types. There is the flatbed trailer which had all three and the Gift Set 14 edition of the Jeep can be found with the three variants but that's all. The red Jeep with the Hydraulic Tower, lamp and Electrician is also scarce with the late wheel type and worth looking out for as sellers who don't read my articles will almost certainly have no idea of this!
The Gift Set 14 edition appeared in February 1961 so only the early editions will have smooth fixed wheels. They are, though, much more common than the free-spinning ones merely because the vast majority of models would have been produced at the outset with just a trickle coming from the factory thereafter. This model did cease in 1964 too so will be harder to find with the free-spinning wheels, in theory, than the 409.
In March 1965 the truck is revised as model number 470 and gets suspension, an interior, a plastic rear canopy, a plastic hook and a fresh coat of mustard or blue paint. The mustard one will nearly always have a red interior and I have yet to see a lemon interior in that colour. The blue edition, much more blue than the pale blue of the 409, can have either lemon or red and they seem pretty evenly distributed. There is also Gift Set 64 edition with a working conveyor unit installed in the back in June 1965. Confusingly for collectors, this is in the same red as the old Gift Set 14 model and, where the conveyor mechanism has fallen off, the remaining model can look initially like either a red 470 or a 409 with interior and suspension!
In December 1965 the Gift Set 14 edition now appears as simply number 478 without the lamp standard but it does, for a while have the electrician. At some point, and I don't know when, the electrician chap is removed too. The Jeep does get a nice metallic green paint job, suspension and an interior and the interior can be either lemon or a quite hard to find red.
The Gift Set 14 box included the red, no suspension, no interior Jeep with a lamp standard and an electrician figure.
The first 478 boxes show that the electrician is included.
As can be seen below, however, later 478s do not include the figure (although the person selling the one illustrated has included it!) Perhaps he did continue to be slipped in to some? I can hardly imagine an order from the bosses going out to the factory floor that from a particular date no more electrician figures were to be added to the boxes. Corgi didn't sell the figure separately so if there were any lying around when the boxes were being put together then I am sure some will have still made it to the outside world.
Finally the 470 gets another revision with the addition of cast wheels in 1968 and a different shade of blue becomes available too. I have seen darker blue 470s with both shaped and cast wheels so it appears that the colour change did not coincide with the wheel change. Again, with both interior colours.
The 478 in metallic green may have a grey-painted boom or (initially shiny) bare mazak. This model ceased being supplied in 1968 but had cast wheels fitted at the very end of its production. I have not seen many and need to add this to my own collection but the cast wheel was a common enough type in the late 1960s so there will be some around.
So, there's quite a few Jeeps to collect, including some satisfyingly scarce editions so the 'set' won't be that easy to complete!
Updated 31/3/24. Thanks to John Bowyer for some corrections and interesting advice about the electrician figure!
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