To tow or not to tow

 This may be something that some of you know all about already but, for some reason, I have missed this in all these years and so, for the benefit of others like me, you will find that some early models have towing eyes cut out of the base and some do not.

Here I illustrate the relevant issues:

200 Ford Consul

201 Austin Cambridge

202 Morris Cowley

203 Vauxhall Velox

204 Rover 90

205 Riley Pathfinder

206 Hillman Husky

207 Standard Vanguard III

The Standard did not get a tin base, all model having the more solid type with a bulge on the rear axle. You will see the black base in two styles, just as the M bases had two styles of text content and placement, as well as a grey base, although this seems only to appear on the later shaped wheels edition with only the top of the roof painted red. I guess there may be examples of smooth wheel editions with a grey base but they'll be pretty scarce.

208 Jaguar 2.4 Litre

209 Jaguar 2.4 Police Car

Subsequent issues all appear to have the tow eye with the more solid base being fitted to 210, 211, 214 and 215 and all from 217.

The 213 Jaguar Fire Service appears only to have the base with a cut-out tow eye, much as one might expect as for the 209 Police Car, being a later issue. Similarly the last of the tin bases, the 216 Austin A40 appears only to have the base with the towing eye.

Generally, I cannot tell the relative numbers of each type and cannot advise which will be the rarer type of base for each of the tin plate models. I would appreciate any help with this, looking through everything on sale and keeping a note of examples found. So far, the Ford Consul seems comparatively scarce with a towing eye because I had to use the image of a very rare blue 200 (not 200M) that I have, all the usual 200 colours having no cut-out. I do expect to find more, though, and doubt that no cut-out can be very unusual.

Again, generally, I would expect the no cut-out models to be less common amongst the 208 and it is possible that none were produced for models issued after 1958 but that's merely my suggestion.

I have yet to examine all the other early issues but so far it appears that the sports cars and Bedford CA vans had no towing eye. That may just be that none I found have one so I shall continue looking before deciding anything on that.

Black and grey bases

An interesting item came in yesterday, this Jaguar 2.4 with a friction motor. It has plenty of signs of wear but the windows are clear and the motor, whilst weak, does work. What immediately caught my eye was that it has a grey base. Every other one that I've encountered, and all those shown on several other sites like QDT have black bases. 

The text seems to be identical. I am aware of only one other model that can be found with either a black or grey base and that's the Standard Vanguard as an RAF Staff Car.

The 208M model first appeared in 1957 and production will have ceased in 1959, none of the M models being that popular. The last three M models were the 211M Studebaker Golden Hawk, 214M Ford Thunderbird and 216M Austin A40 and these were issued in late 1958 or 1959. All of these that I have seen have had grey bases and all the M models prior to the 208M Jaguar seem to have had only black. From this I am inclined to conclude that the change from black to grey bases would have been made sometime in late 1958 and, therefore, few Jaguars will have this.

The 352 RAF Staff Car was not issued until 1958 so I thought that a black base on this model could be quite scarce too. However, a quick look through Ebay and QDT pages shows that all but one for sale at the moment do have the black base. So that idea doesn't seem right! Maybe the 207 model didn't sell well and there were lots left from earlier years' production which Corgi painted RAF blue and turned into 352 models.

There are at least two variations of the bases for all the early models. That includes the tin base models as well as the solid base versions, whether M models or not, and the early racing cars and Bedford CA vans. The typeface for 'Corgi Toys' and the text itself and the layout you will find are clearly different and I shall have to make a study of these sometime.

For now, though, I would be interested to learn of any other models with both grey and black bases like these. There could clearly be an implication for values.

The 1959 Plymouth Suburban Estate car can be found with either a cream or grey base and the 210 Citroen comes either with or without a rear axle 'bulge' so it seems that the years around 1958-9 were a time of some change at the factory in this particular respect.