Samples from the Corgi Factory!

It's funny what can happen when you're in a hotel car park in Towcester. I had arranged to meet a young Mr Wilford, recently flown in from New Zealand to help his mother with some things, whose father had been a Designer at Corgi and whose grandfather had been Percy Wilford, one of Corgi's Chief Designers. He said he had a few odd items lying around at his mother's house and wondered if I could advise him. 

First of all he gets out a box of pretty tedious-looking Corgi Classics and they're all familiar apart from one that catches my eye. Yes, it's the 9022 Daimler 1910 38 'Available Later' in the Corgi Catalogue. It's missing a steering wheel and dashboard but looked otherwise finished and ready to put on the market.

I took another look also at a Bentley 1927 3½ litre. Initially the silver horn had caught my eye but then I noticed the very detailed dashboard and steering wheel! Marvellous work by someone there.

There are also some motorcycles that I do not recognise but which seem to be Corgi proptotypes. Perhaps there might have been a series of bikes in someone's plans at the time?

In another box were some Whizzwheel models and amongst them some strangely coloured Alfa Romeo P33s. 

I knew this car in white rather than metallic light pink, blue or rhododendron!

The Porsche 911 Targa also looked different. The wheels. Now they suited the car so much better than the ubiquitous Whizzwheels it came out with. I also know the car with a black interior for this shade, not the bright orange.

Turning the cars over, revealed an explanation.

These were all samples, with bases screwed on rather than riveted. How much easier our lives would be now had Corgi used screws throughout!

Now, imagine the scene. You'll see that we were using a table outside the hotel and had Corgi Toys spread here and there. An older chap walks by with his wife and remarks something to the effect of 'That's a nice display. I recognise some of those.'

We tell him who we are and what we're doing and he tells us that he also worked at Corgi Toys in Northampton. Mr Hancock was another Designer there. Quite an extraordinary coincidence. he proceeds to tell the young Mr Wilford that he is very much like his father, who Mr Hancock had known well and worked with in the later 1960s and he tells us that his picture is in The Great Book Of Corgi. and the young Mr. Wilford just happens to have that in the boot of his car! After some shuffling through the pages, Mr Hancock finds himself in one of the pictures again.

Mr Hancock did say that his specialist area was 'wheels'. Apparently he had the best set of compasses there at the time. I did briefly wonder whether we had met the man responsible for Whizzwheels but I decided not to pursue that subject. Another day, perhaps.

We move on to look at another box. This one contains gold-plated models. The Batmobile and Jaguar show signs of tarnishing that I presume would imply that it's not real gold plating but some other compound that looks nice and shiny and gold but reacts more to the air.

Looking much brighter are a Ferrari Berlinetta, a Rover 2000 (252 type) and Jaguar Mk X.

These show no signs of tarnishing and are all pretty much immaculate, just in need of a careful clean. there is also a lovely Land Rover (438 type) with some nice black paint detailing on top of the plating.

I believe that these gold-plated items would have been examples of maybe a dozen or so made as gifts for important visitors or people Corgi executives visited. These are just some that were not used or, perhaps, were samples as many of the items gave me the impression that they came from a Samples Department which was referred to in some paperwork.

The young Mr Wilford also had piles of books and catalogues. The two Great Books Of Corgi had been signed by Marcel Van Cleemput.

A nice collection of original catalogues were there too, most pretty much as new, with Canada or New Zealand and dates written on them. again, I am assuming these were samples from a print run.

Although featured here at the end, the first thing I actually had spotted was this metallic lime green Chevrolet Camaro, the 304 edition with Whizzwheels. 

The solid blue edition is scarce as it is, so to find another colour was a great surprise and, for me, one of the most exciting items there.

For others it may be the gold-plated Batmobile or the never- issued Daimler but I think my personal favourite out of all is the gold-plated Rover 2000. It's just the standard 252 car, plated. Wonderful.

All in all, a pleasant and fascinating afternoon with the remarkable coincidence of a chap wandering in to a hotel in Towcester meeting someone from New Zealand who had his photo in a book in his boot! But I find my life is full of surprises anyway. 

Now, I need help from you people out there as to what that plating may or may not be. I need to suggest to the young Mr Wilford how we should go about disposing or these items, or not, as the case may be. Whilst I cannot say that all or any of these will be available to purchase in the near future or, indeed, that I will get the task of arranging identification and sale, if you do wish to express an interest in any of them or are aware of similar items that had been sold in the past, then do please get in touch.

I am confident that, with a bit of help, I will be able to make as good a job of finding good new homes at worthwhile prices as the big auction houses.

A Building Contractor Set and evidence of Farmer George's retirement?

I really did not expect to find the late Massey Ferguson 50B Tractor interesting! However, as #54 it comes with a shovel attachment and I recently acquired a decent one in yellow and red with good ol' Farmer George still on the seat.

This is the fairly short-lived edition that came out in 1974 and lasted until around 1977. I have since seen another yellow and red one but it seems to have no Farmer George and the Great Book Of Corgi seems to indicate a re-issue in 1980 which that might be. I haven't got the book but maybe someone could have a look at the pictures - plates 614 and 799 - for me. There's no way he can get out so it must be a different production if it does exist.

Whatever the case, I now have a further two different versions! Neither, incidentally, have Farmer George so he definitely does seem to have retired in the late 1970s.

First is this orange tractor with a shiny silver shovel attachment and white wheels. It has a black roof, fully covered.

In every production detail this is identical to #54 from Corgi and yet it does not have the Corgi logo on the base. It has exactly the same other information, though, the 'Made in Great Britain' text and model name in the same places and style as #54. So that is a bit of a mystery as I can find no documentation for this one anywhere.

For another, however, I have found the answer. The other that has just come in is the same orange colour but with a dull metal shovel attachment. It has cream wheels, a white base that stretches up inside the cabin and the roof is entirely orange, bearing a transfer with the Block company logo.

I had thought that this might have been a special edition made for the Block company to distribute but I did have some success researching this one and discovered another Gift Set! This is actually called a Building Contractor Set 2. The tractor comes with a #440 Mazda Pick-up which also has the Block logo on its door and a concrete mixer.

This may well also be the source for the example which is slightly different. It is pretty likely but I await some confirmation if anyone knows.

I have also seen pictures of an all white version, described as a 'Marks & Spencer' edition but I have no further information. With the larger scale David Brown already issued at the time, I am surprised they bothered with these variations in 1:43 scale.

These late models may not in themselves be that interesting but the sets some of them appear in were not made in huge numbers and still seem quite reasonably priced - if you can find them, that is! It seems that the last years of Corgi as we knew it may have a few 1:43 surprises yet! The Mazda, however, is the larger 1:36 scale. At first glance they seem to go together well but then you compare the wheel sizes and, of course, the tractor's should be considerably bigger than the Mazda's!

I suppose I shall have to add the Contractor Set to my lists. I shall guess at a 1980 release date, along with the driver-less 50B but, again, I have nothing to support this. I still find the missing Corgi logo quite odd.

Chevrolet Impala

A collector in The Netherlands just asked me some questions about Impalas so I thought I may as well share my answers generally here.

He was concerned about there being an all blue 248 (as mentioned in The Great Book of Corgi) and not sure what variations might be out there for the Impalas.

Although that book is a great resource for us collectors, the authors and photographers were a bit too close to the production lines and maybe not so much aware of what really made it to the shops. So there are entries which may have existed in the factory and even a few may have escaped into the wild but really there is little hope of you and I actually finding one.

Or being able to afford it even if we did! 

So I tend to ignore some 'versions' and not worry about trying to find them. 

That is a general comment - now to answer your Impala queries.  

220 comes in pale blue and that interesting and very 1960s pink colour. The only variation is the blue one can have yellow or red interiors. Anything else is what I call an 'oddity'! 

To the best of my knowledge, there is only the one 248 that was available to buy. That is the one with two shades of brown-yellow. I have never seen a variation of this but I can understand that, at the time of the change, there will have been examples made using the old colours. 

248 is an example of the second type of Impala that was produced in 1965 in an attempt to extend the life of the old casting. They cleverly split the old one in two and inserted a piece of chrome all the way along, providing chrome grill and front end, stripes along the side and shiny rear lights and bumper!  

This worked very well and they applied it to all the Impalas - the taxi, Fire Chief's car, Police car getting extended life with Type II models. There may, therefore, be examples of different tops and bottoms that factory workers may have decided to mess about with on a Friday afternoon when the boss wasn't looking! I haven't seen any, though, so I doubt if many actually made it to the shops. Some good restorers can also 'create' variants quite simply as all the parts match. 

All Impalas have good suspension and interiors. The 220 types will have fixed wheels (fitted either way round) and there may be some with free spinning wheels (but I haven't seen any). All the 248 types have free spinning wheels which had become the norm by the time they appeared. 

The thin roof supports can be easily bent and the screen unit extends a lot at the front which makes it vulnerable to damage. If the unit becomes a little loose it can hang down as there isn't much to support it. 

My list of 'all models' may be worth referring to as I have compiled this over time with advice from many sources and been able to detect some of the innocent mistakes I find - even in respectable and well-informed sites. It is also constantly updated - for instance your question reminded me that I hadn't included the different interior colours so I have today updated that.

Corgi Toys 1956-74. Lists.

Here is what ought to be a fairly complete list of Corgi models from 1956 to 1974 in something approximating to scale 1:43. Basically, the 'normal' size Corgis before the big 1:36 size days.



I have used information from Marcel van Cleemput's The Great Book of Corgi and some other research in compiling this and will continue to revise this as necessary so please e-mail me if I have missed something important or made a mistake. The list shown here and also on my web site are 'live' Google sheets so will always show the most recent data.

I have also made separate lists available for this list without the Corgi Majors and Gift Sets. One or two remain but it makes for easier reference without them.

A-Z List
Model No. order
Possibly scarcity

This last is just a guide and guesswork. All I did was take the number of years items had been available for and then sort by declared numbers sold where that is available. Now, of course, there'll be some that sold lots and lots in a short time and others that sold as slowly as a Field Radar device but was around for years - they'll appear either way too high or too low in the list but that's the best I can do and it was interesting to see how many had been around for less than a year (so really should be a bit scarce) and those that have almost always been there.

You can also see which makes have the most different models.I'll leave you to guess and check for yourself on the ABC sheet.