Corgi Model Club: RAC Radio Rescue Land Rover

My RAC Radio Rescue Land Rover has finally arrived and it really does look good. I have many of these but they are all somewhat worn so it was quite a dramatic model to see when I opened the box. You get the model wrapped in some tissue paper with a square chunk of polystyrene protecting the aerial. I have never seen such a straight aerial! There's also another square protecting the box from the hook and a long piece of thicker card which I think protects the top of everything.

There is also the Certificate of Authenticity, although the text is so poor and, in places, simply wrong that it is best viewed from the one side only. It does strike me as remarkable that the people at the Club who are responsible for quality control are not particularly good at their jobs. Maybe they're descendants from the original Corgi Quality Controllers! As I will refer to later, little things do matter but the text on this certificate is no small mistake - more like a number of howlers someone should be sacked for missing.

The first Series I Land Rover was issued in August 1957, not 1959. That first sentence may be correct but it is misleading and it would have been far better rephrased. In any event the 416 is no more a re-liveried version of 351 than it is of a 406, which also had a tin canopy in Gift Set 2. They go on to say that 'a small number didn't have the roof-mounted sign' but we have no evidence as to the split. Some years ago, I spent many hours trying to figure out how the four editions of 416 might have shared the 209000 sold (sold, not produced, note) and gave up. These, incidentally, are the editions with a headboard and smooth wheels, a headboard and shaped wheels, no headboard and smooth wheels and no headboard with shaped wheels. Then they say that 'others included 'Radio Rescue' lettering on the tilt'. The fact is that all the 'no headboard' models had the extra text on the tilt, not some other edition. The big howler is comparing sales to '436, introduced at the same time'. They mean 438. But it is hardly surprising that there will have been rather fewer sales of an RAC model available for just a few years in comparison the the basic model which was available for ten years in one form or another.

So, to the model itself. That is very impressive at first glance, maybe second glance too.

All looks very good - until you look more closely at the grille.

The original has16 squares at the widest part, 8 at the top. The Chinese one has 13 and 7. The vertical divisions are different too. Now, unless I have missed a variation and the Chinese numbers do match an original, this is simply not good enough. You may say that it is just a tiny detail - but look at how many of the other tiny details they have got right on models galore to date. This is plain wrong and the more you look at it the plainer it becomes. I had assumed two things - one was that the production of these copies started with a mould being made from a good original. The other was that CMC staff would very carefully inspect samples when received. I appear to be wrong on both counts.

Someone might also have spotted that original 416 models only had silver paint applied to the vertical face of the front bumper, not the whole thing. That's more obvious than the grille, too.

So my initial excitement at seeing what I perceived as a wonderfully fresh example of a model hard to find in such condition has waned rather. 

I have just noticed that the 406 re-issue had the same grille and bumper paint error. I admit that I missed these things at the time and allowed CMC to get away with it. Not this time!