The Austin Princess has been dubbed the forgotten car and even in it’s day had many critics, more commonly known as the ‘wedge’, this Corgi Vanguards version has fantasic detail right down to the windscreen wipers and wing mirrors.
This is from the 1:43 scale ‘classics’ selection although now not on the Corgi website, I did have the fortune of finding one of these to start my ‘ The cars I owned’ collection, this is the first car to add to this range.
This was a limited addition of only 5010, never really sure why they are odd numbers, and this one is number 391 of 5010.
The model has the Vanguards number, VA10200 in brooklands green.
It is a different model to the one I had but the one that came up , mine (pictured below) had the square headlights rather than the round one’s in the model which is an 1800L and of course the colour is different, I have now been told there is a Vanguards 2200HL version which has the same headlights as mine so will be looking out for it, mine was also badged with the Leyland emblem.
The picture was taken in the late 80′s when I was the proud owner of this car and enjoyed every minute of owning it.
For more on the real car Click Here
The Matchbox Vantastic was released in 1975, and based on the Mustang of the day, back then there was a big interest in custom cars and vans and although I doubt this was ever built it is certainly possible, I myself was into trucks and converted among other things, a London Taxi cab, an Austin Princess and a Rover SD1 into pickup trucks in the 80′s.
The Vantastic I have is in two versions, one with an exposed engine and one without, I have tried to research which came first but no real information seems to be available on this but what I do know is this was re released when Matchbox were producting cars in China and the casting without the engine was used, that said all Matchbox models of that period had blacked out windows and the vantastic was no exception.
The one without the exposed engine should have side and bonnet decals but this is how it came to me.
As far as I knew the early production model from 1975 only came in orange and the later Chinese versions came in Beige and light blue (with blacked out windows).
But have now seen the 1975 issue in brown with a Maserati decal on the bonnet, although not convinced the decal is original, and also in Metallic blue with the decals as for the orange version
Model Details
Matchbox Vantastic
No, 34
Colours, Orange body, white base.
Released, 1975
Discontinued, 1980
Anything is possible as a real motor this may of been done and if anyone knows about it let me know, in the mean time the picture below shows a british built drag van.
Matchbox were always on the ball and even in the early Superfast years seemed to produce up to the minute models.
This article brings together the Matchbox Citroen SM and the BMC 1800 Pininfarina, in a way they are connected in the real world but first the models.
The Citroen SM No51 was released in 1972, the same year the real one won the 1972 Motor Trend Car of the Year award in the U.S, and was in production until 1977.
This was available in red metallic or blue metallic and the red one has either a white or red interior.
The BMC 1800 Pininfarina, N056, was released in 1969 and with Superfast wheels, this was available in Gold and later in orange, the real car was in fact a concept design that was never put in production.
The real cars are linked in a way depending on what you read, the BMC, although never produced as a production car the design predates the Citroen CX by seven years although look a lot similar, there was also to be an BMC 1100 version, this later could be seen in the design of the Citroen GS.
Some interesting web pages on both cars below;
The Citroen SM
Citroen SM
Ciroenet
BMC 1800 Pininfarina
BMC 1800
aronline
The Matchbox Karrier Bantam was first released in 1956 and although I’m not sure what dates the two versions appeared there is the ‘even load’ and the ‘uneven load’ versions and an early bit of Coca Cola advertising, in the early Matchbox catalogues they were listed with railway scales and these were scaled on the HO railway scale which is 1:87.
Later in 1957 the Karrier refuse collector was release and was once a common sight on our roads.
The two bottle carriers No37, below show the loading difference on the castings.
Matchbox Karrier refuse collector No38 below.
The later black wheel version was a complete new casting which can be seen on the doors in the picture below.
Matchbox had also added the black base with this version rather than an open casting.
The fronts are also different the later one on the right has the grill bars as slots whereas the older one on the left has raised grill bars the window lines are different too, this tends to make it more like the real truck, steps have been added to the bumper end as well.
The real Karrier Bantam was actually a Commer cab and I remember these as Commer’s and Karrier’s, Commer actually bought out Karrier back in 1936 as part of the Rootes group
For more on The real Karrier Bantam Click Here
