Mini Mistakes

Here is something a little different! It's a 227 Morris Mini-Cooper body on a 226 Morris Mini-Minor base. I bought it for my friend and Corgi collector, Andi, who lives abroad, where the seller wasn't keen to post stuff to. Having it delivered to me here in the UK also gave me the chance to take a closer look at it. It could, of course, have simply been something someone had made from almost any old 226 using a drill and just a Code 3 of not really of great interest. However the paint on the inside of the holes and around the edges is untouched and so this is most likely to have been mistake at the Corgi factory.

I can imagine how a rack of 227 bodies could have been sent to the painting area and a dose of 226 lilac-blue was applied instead of the darker shade of 227 blue or even primrose. At a pinch, I can just about imagine how these blue 227 bodies found themselves further down the production line and being attached to 226 bases. More difficult might be understanding how these got past Quality Control unless you remember that there wasn't a great deal of either consistent quality or control going on! Or maybe they didn't get any further, this one and a few others finding their way into workers' pockets and back home for the kids to play with.

Clearly, how this one reached freedom outside the factory walls in or around 1966 we shall never know but it certainly didn't get played with and is as unmarked as if it had remained in the pocket of a pair of overalls ever after. The rivets are particularly clean and very new-looking. I did have my suspicions that these may have been replacements but the design and imprint is identical to others I have seen and they really do look like Corgi factory rivets.

One odd thing about this model is the fact that the body is a Type 1, the first casting, whereas the cast wheel base is the latest casting used and one might have expected anything with cast wheels to have had the Type II body. I have seen, however, this combination before so it's probably better to say that it's not so much odd but a little less common.

My friend is quite keen to have this and put some jewels in the holes so that it looks like a 227 in the 226 blue. I've cautioned him, though, that to do the job properly would require bezels or metal holder for the jewels and inserting those would inevitably damage the paint and destroy the model's provenance. He might as well buy any old 226 and drill a couple of holes and achieve the same end result. OK, finding a Type 1 body with cast wheels as clean as these isn't that easy but it would be preferable to spoiling something which someone might like to have as it stands for their collection of Corgi Mini mistakes.

As it happens, I have the reverse 'factory mistake' in the form of a 226 Morris Mini-Minor body on a 227 Morris Mini-Minor base. I have suggested that, instead of sending them to him for jewel insertion, I put the pair up for sale and see if anyone's interested. I would value each of them at around £250 so I'll be asking £350 for the two. I guess that will bring howls of protest from some quarters but a single decent and unmarked, somewhat scarce normal Mini in exceptional condition would sell for £60 and something like this factory error must be worth at least three or four times as much.

The 226 body / 227 base model is in the earlier pale blue rather than the lilac-blue of my friend's 227/226 model so the colours don't match and the base styles are some years apart but they still make an interesting pair.

While I'm at it, here's another nice pair that I have available at a similar price, this time Austin Seven bodies on Morris Mini-Minor and Morris Mini-Cooper bases! Oh, what fun you can have with Corgi Minis!

226 Morris Mini Minor

This is the most difficult Mini to list. There are so many possible variations to look for!

There is a wide range of shades between the pale blue and lilac blue that I have listed. It seems that the early models were mostly shades of pale blue, including a quite bright baby blue and sky blue, whereas later editions were predominantly lilac blue or similar.

Free spinning wheels would have been introduced on this model by 1962, possibly earlier and may be found with base type 1b, although I have seen any yet. In 1966 the cast, spoke effect type will have been fitted and shortly afterwards a switch to the type 2 body casting would have been made. This will have resulted in very short production periods for some editions.

For an explanation of the different types, please see my article titled Minis - the different types in September 2017.

Minis - the different types

It is time to make a comprehensive list of all the Minis. I have put it off for too long. Rather than write an extremely long-winded article, I decided to deal first with the main variations that apply pretty much across the whole range and then write about each model separately. With about 80 different Minis to list, this should make it a little easier for people looking for information about a specific model.

Colour

Now this may seem simple and hardly worth writing about but the difficulty I had with listing 226s has been one of the reasons for taking so long in doing this. For most models it really is quite simple, with just the one or more obviously different colours. However for the 225 Austin Seven and the 226 Morris Mini Minor it could have got complicated.

The Austin is now pretty straightforward. Whilst there are many shades of red, from an orangey shade, through tomato to whatever fruit you might identify with deep red, I've decided to call them all simply 'red'. There's also primrose, of course.

The Morris was not so simple. I've settled for pale blue and lilac blue but accept that there are umpteen shades in between, especially for the earlier editions.

Interior colour

That's easy. Barring factory mistakes, there should be few difficulties in this section.

Make

Believe it or not, for some models, you do have to look at the badge on the bonnet to determine whether it is an 'Austin' or a 'Morris', regardless of what the box or base may say it is, or, for that matter, what newspaper pictures may tell you that the real thing the model depicts actually was! 

Windows

All models will have editions with clear windows but some Whizzwheels models will also have editions where they are tinted.

Wheels

These should be pretty obvious, the choice being between:

• fixed smooth wheels
• fixed shaped wheels
• free shaped wheels
• cast wheels (with a spoke effect pattern)
• 4 spoke Whizzwheels
• 5 spoke Whizzwheels

5 spoke Whizzwheel

4 spoke Whizzwheel

Base

There are five main base types for the non-Whzzwheels models.

Type 1a holes and two flat rectangular panels

Type 1b (note: the front is to the right in this image)
 panels but no holes, full width front lower bumper

Type 1c panels and narrower lower bumper

Type 2a no panels, text in centre sections

Type 2b no panels, text in centre sections
and a round post near the front

• type 1a bases all seem to have fixed wheels
• type 1b bases can be found with fixed (early) or free (late) wheels
• type 1c bases most seem to have free wheels
• type 2a and 2b models all have free wheels.

For Whizzwheels models there are another three bases across the range, distinguished by colour:

• matt black
• gloss black
• silver

Some models can be found with each type!

Body

There are three distinct castings used:

• type 1
• type 2 look for a horizontal line along the front wing, a different grille, higher front cast line and general shape
• type 2a like type 2 but with extended wheel arches
• type 3 is obviously different, with opening doors, bonnet and boot

Type 1 left, type 2 right: grille and casting line differences

Type 1 left, type 2 right.

Type 2a wheel arches
(also illustrates the horizontal wing line of type 2)

In type 1 the main body is common to Austin and Morris versions, with a front die change for the differing grilles and their related bonnet badges. Type 2s always have a Morris grille and badge.

Other differences

There are sometimes different colour steering wheels but I have not listed these yet. In the main, they are consistent with another change.

The 334 Mini also has two types of sliding roof blind, one with narrow stripes and a very scarce wider stripe variety (now listed).

The 339 Mini Cooper can have paper labels on in place of the earlier transfers for the door numbers. These I have shown separately.

I am grateful to a number of collectors for their help in understanding some of the history of these changes.The illustrations in these and the individual model posts are from my own collection except for the two Whizzwheels 5 spoke model photos on this page provided by Minifanatics.

More information about the Fernel East African Safari game

I found this Mini a long time ago when I first started this task of finding as many different models as I could. A few weeks previously I had noticed a blue Mini sell for a crazy amount - well over £300 - and all that I could see that was different about it was a hole in the base. The description referred to something called a Fernel game. In that case it was a Monte Carlo game where (I am guessing) players threw dice and their cars were propelled by some device that fitted into the base around a track.

I remember looking this up at the time but never expected to see any more. Then this one appeared. It got little attention as the photos were poor and that hole was not at all obvious. the person selling it made no mention of it either, which was good as far as I was concerned. I won it easily and have since been trying to make sure that there was, indeed, a version of the game with purple Minis too.

Before buying it I had found a good reference to a later version of the game but no decent images. Now, at last, I have found all the information that I was looking for.

It's an odd looking affair. A Monte Carlo version is for sale at about £800 but I haven't seen this East African Safari one for sale yet.

My car didn't have the stickers. I have added a replacement East African one for the bonnet - they are the same as Corgi made for the VW1200! The numbers do not look familiar so I may skip those for now.

I would love to get hold of one of these games - and the other car as there would have been two - but suspect they'll be at crazy prices unless I happen to see one somewhere completely off the collectors' beaten track. Actually, I would love to find some places where odd cars and things like this could still appear and the people with them having no idea of what they have. This game, for instance, looks really quite cheap and nasty with its red and yellow plastic and not a great deal more!

Now that mine does at least look a bit more like it should I shall see what interest there is but I am definitely not letting it go for a song.

I would dearly love to give some credit to the place where I found these images a few days ago but I'll have to search through my browsing history to find the site again. I have tried a pile of Google searches to no avail.