Corgi Chevrolet Impalas

 

You will, of course, be familiar with this recent issue of the wonderful #248 Chevrolet Impala, the second edition of the saloon model, this time in a butterscotch and cream flavour, as opposed to pale blue or salmon. What you will not be familiar with, however, is the finish on this delightful example, which really should be described as Impala à la Pearson, having being expertly polished so that what the Club sent us by way of a strange satin-finished model (and attempted to assert that this was how it was intended to be issued to boot!) now looks much more like it should.

My 'satin finish' Club edition placed next to Chris Pearson's shows the difference clearly.

Mr Pearson also likes to replace the rivets with something that better matches the originals.

Mr Pearson tells me that his Aunt Iris worked at the Corgi factory from 1958 to 1983 and he would sometimes accompany her as a child and he recalls seeing a number of 'prototypes', not that he would have known they would have been prototypes at the time. One was the #481 Chevrolet Police Patrol Car with a white lower section. The other was the #482 Chevrolet Fire Chief Car but with a black lower section.

As luck would have it, the two issued models can simply be taken apart and the sections swapped and there we have very nice copies of the 'prototypes'! It has since occurred to me that what he saw at the factory may just have been some 'mistakes' or someone having fun with the two halves with #481 and #482 probably rolling down the production line at similar times in 1965/66. I feel this is more likely, certainly for the Fire Chief model.

My research indicates that the Fire Chief car is unlikely to have existed in the 1959-style. In 1959, General Motors completely broke the mould with a wildly low, wide, and aggressive space-age design. The massive protruding rear "batwings" and sprawling trunk lines made it a styling masterpiece, but highly impractical for utilitarian city fleets. Because of the extreme rear fins, municipal fire and police departments overwhelmingly rejected the 1959 Impala sedan for official duty.

 Instead, the rare 1959 Chevrolets that did make it into fire service were almost exclusively 1959 Chevrolet Brookwood or Kingswood Station Wagons (which flattened out the wild fins to carry ladders and equipment), or stripped-down, lower-trim Biscayne sedans. Corgi took considerable artistic license by reusing their existing, highly popular 1959 Impala civilian saloon diecast mould (originally released in late 1959 as Corgi #223) to create the Fire Chief edition.

I have been able to find just one example of the 1959 style Impala in genuine use as a police car, this image, courtesy of the Ypsilanti, Michigan Community archives at https://www.reddit.com/r/ypsi

Nevertheless, the two variants that Mr Pearson very kindly sent me are very well constructed and fun to add to my own collection. I have always been a fan of the Impalas (although not the final throes of vehicles for kennel services or poodle display).

Here they are for your admiration.

Lastly, I am not at all sure now that there was ever such a thing as the 1959 Impala as a taxi in either all yellow or the later yellow and red, other than, perhaps, much more recently, in Cuba! It was the Police car that came first, in December 1959, and I can see that there will have been some evidence of a vehicle they could reproduce. After that, I do believe it was a matter of making the most from an excellent casting.

One might say that the Corgi Model Club are doing the same, and I am not referring necessarily to the Impalas here. Take a look at their forthcoming issues:

R345 MGC GT

R303S Mercedes-Benz 300SL Open Top Roadster (cream edition)

R246 Chrysler Imperial (Kingfisher blue edition)

R275 Rover 2000TC (white edition)

R302 MGA (teal edition)

R318 Lotus Elan S2 (copper edition)

There is also a store-only issue of an MGA in off-white in October by way of celebration of Corgi's 70th anniversary. I quite like the idea of a variation of one of the early models for this purpose but with the teal edition already in the pipeline at about the same time I feel they would have been better advised to choose one of the actual 1956 releases, not this one, which was May 1957, nearly a year later. There is, of course, a fair case to be made of economy of scale, using resources in several different ways but the frequency we see now does make me wonder whether all is well back at the Corgi ranch. I know that just about everybody who reads this has enjoyed collecting diecast models but I am not so sure there is such a certainty of a continuing robust market for people collecting new diecast models.

It will be quite nice to see fresh-looking examples of the Chrysler, Rover and MGA, the Chrysler and MGA being extremely hard to find in any condition. The Rover is not that common either. So I can see that the Club provide a way for people to fill missing spaces. I am also quite content with the production of models that were not actually issued, such as the Lotus Elan in copper and the MGA in off white. These are interesting and could be collectible as a group on their own although, having said that, it could be argued that every Club issue would fall into this category as none are ever quite right!

Another rare find abroad

 

A long time ago, in April 1960, the first Austin Taxi was issued. Model #418 would prove to have a very long life indeed, still going strong with Whizzwheels in the 1970s until eventually being abandoned for the 1:36 scale in February 1978. In all that time the casting seems never to have changed, only the base and wheels. And it is those wheels that have fascinated my friend Andi in Germany and myself for some considerable time.

At some point the taxi gets shaped wheels - probably quite late in its production as they seem a lot less common than the smooth type - but they remain fixed to the axles. However, with production not being ceased until 1965 it would seem pretty likely that there would be some models from the later period with free spinning shaped wheels. These were, indeed, fitted to the Gift Set 35 models, which had one of two drivers behind the wheel - either a serious looking small chap in uniform looking very much like the driver of the Green Hornet or the portly and cheerful remake of Simon Templar as Fred Housego in a nice jacket and bow-tie.

Despite this edition being produced, we have singularly failed to find a normal #418 issue with free-spinning wheels and no driver. Until a little while ago when my friend found this is France and it has finally arrived here on my desk.

Assuming that we simply haven't just not spotted the free-spinning wheel versions, this has to be either an extremely scarce model or a Gift Set 35 edition which managed to get away from the factory without having a driver installed. 

Whilst the 'factory error' is a possible explanation, I am inclined to the view that there simply must have been some free-spinning wheels editions made at the end of its production run and they would have been made for both the #418 box issue or sent down another channel at the factory to have a driver popped into place and then onward to join a bus and the policeman in Gift Set 35.

The Gift Set 35 first appeared in July 1964 and every model we've found with a driver has free-spinning wheels so it seems reasonable that sometime in 1964 all the last #418 taxis were being fitted with them prior to their getting Whizzwheels in June 1971. 

Another strange thing is that the #418 is supposed to have been discontinued as a boxed issue in 1965 and the Gift Set 35 edition ceases to be available in 1968. So there is a three year gap before the Whizzwheels editions appear in a box in June 1971 and the revised London Gift Set 11 in August 1971.

The 1965, 1966, 1967 and 1969 Corgi Catalogues show the Gift Set 35 edition only. There is no taxi in the 1970 catalogue and in the 1972 Catalogue it is the Whizzwheels #418 that is shown, as well as being available in the revised Gift Set.

I can't think of another model where production ceased and was then resumed several years later without any change to the casting. All the other switches to Whizzwheels occurred with the new edition replacing the old more or less immediately and usually with some changes to the colour schemes and some features. The taxi, however, stayed black (initially at least!) and, although the interior for most seems to have been changed to red, there are plenty around with the same lemon flavour inside.

So it seems perfectly reasonable for the Austin Taxi to have continued in production, getting free-spinning wheels fitted and placed in #418 boxes between 1965, when it was supposedly discontinued as a boxed model, and 1971 when the Whizzwheels took over. If that were so, however, why have we not seen any?

So putting a value on this model is not easy. As a factory error it would be worth around £250.  As a scarce late production model then, purely because I have not seen another in over 15 years of looking, I value it as highly as those I have seen several of, like the blue Mini Marcos GT850, Kingfisher blue Chrysler Imperial or PopArt Mini and several others which regularly fetch around £1000.

So, for now, until I know more about this mystery, that's what anyone will have to pay for this to leave my collection.