Corgi Toys @ 60 : Gift set 35 and an old Daimler

 It's July 1964 and our local toy shop gets a Daimler to add to the shelves. I had hoped at the time that it might be a Daimler Dart or something I could play with but, no, it was the third 'Classic' old timer model in the shape of a 1910 Daimler 38HP, no 9021.

With a chauffeur at the wheel and three passengers it is a busy model. There are three horns along the bottom of the windscreen and two gigantic headlamps either side of the radiator with a nice emblem on top. I had always thought that colours in the early 20th Century were drab but here we have a bright red car with bright yellow wheels!

It is well-made and very detailed and a credit to Corgi's production at the time but not for their marketing sense as, like the other 'Classics', sales were not great. You just couldn't play with these models. Without suspension, they were awkward to steer round corners and lots of bits were vulnerable to breaking. As a consequence, many seldom left their boxes and can now be found easily - with excellent examples for very small prices.

Something that can't now be found so easily is the Gift Set 35 - the 'London Passenger Set' which was also issued at this time.

This featured the 418 Austin Taxi but with two differences - it now had a driver and it now had free-spinning wheels. Although one has recently come to light*, every other example of the 418 prior to Whizzwheels had fixed wheels, smooth or shaped but always fixed.

The driver would be the old chap in a uniform at first, actually the Cato character re-employed from the 269 Green Hornet. Later he will be replaced by a Fred Housego character looking much more relaxed and very much like the Thunderbird driver of old.

The bus was the usual 469 model with a Corgi Toys banner in early editions, later changing to Outspan Oranges.

There is also a policeman on point duty, rotating on a white plastic podium. This part is very difficult to find now so making up a set is not an easy task, even if you do manage to find a good reproduction box.

With the rather different scales of the bus and taxi, this set does look a bit strange on display. Not very many were sold and now complete sets in original boxes are valuable items.

*Discovered by my collector friend, Andi, in France. We think that it may have been a model intended for a Gift Set but the driver was accidentally missed at the factory. It is feasible that free-spinning wheels could have been fitted to the normal 418 but one would have expected many to be available if that were the case.