Corgi Toys @ 60 : Two Americans

 

August 1965 sees two lovely American cars on the shelves in your local Corgi Toys shop.

You need to be fairly quick to find one, though, as the plain version of the new split Impala was not around for long at all, less than a year on dealers' order lists. So this is a comparatively scarce model but one that also gets cast wheels later in each production and this version seems particularly hard to find.

It is always in what I call coffee and cream and I am not aware of any variations in the finish at all. These colours do suit the period well, although I guess they're not a combination you'll see on the streets today. This Chevrolet Impala is the last of the four reworkings of the old 220 model. There are two last gasps to come when it gets a sort of box shape added to the rear for two dog wagons, one in 1967 and the last in 1970 for a Chipperfields Circus edition. The 248 model, however, is the last Impala saloon.

The other American arrival was heavily advertised as having a 'surprise' in the boot. I was rather disappointed to take this one out of the box and find quite a dull-looking Chrysler Imperial inside and the surprise was a golfing trolley with a set of clubs!

The car was big, very rectangular and everything opened. I suppose that should have been quite impressive as it was an open convertible too but I remember finding it all a bit clunky, with very far doors, a screen that looked as if it had just fallen onto the car and a rather basic-looking dashboard. 

The 'chrome' elements were now a solid chunk of silvery metal, including two bars for the cills. There were two people included with the car too although they often got lost and are missing in all the photos I have taken of those in my possession.

Here they are.

You will find this model with two colours for the interior - chalky green or chalky blue, similar to the colours found in the Mustangs. In my experience the blue seems a lot more common than the green but I cannot say which came first or perhaps they were both produced over the years and the difference was merely down to the current supply of interior materials at the time.

I have always found the door panels to match the interior, however.

The early editions had shaped wheels, replaced pretty soon after issue with cast wheels. I bought my own model very soon after it was issued and that had cast wheels and the green interior. Shaped wheels are quite a scarce variation.

I show here too the very rare 'Kingfisher blue' edition which some people have found in 246 boxes, with the two people and the golf trolley, always with cast wheels. This was supposed to be a replacement for the Bermuda Taxi but never made it into production as such. Clearly a batch of models were prepared in that finish and I can only guess that it was decided to sell them off as normal 246 models instead when the Bermuda Taxi idea was dropped. This would, though, have been sometime later than August 1965.

The #246 model stayed in production for a couple of years and sold quite well, despite is heavy 9/3d price tag, only 8d less that the James Bond Aston Martin which would come out a couple of months later.