Thursday 5 February 2015

Jaguar 2.4








Jaguar were well represented by Corgi. Whilst there would later be the lovely little E type, its annoyingly larger cousin fastback and a whole Dulux paint chart of Mark Xs the first was a Jaguar 2.4 litre - the first type with fewer vertical lines on the grill.

#208 comes out in 1957 in two versions - white for the normal one and a nice metallic blue for the Mechanical one. A couple of years later they are reviving the original models by giving them two-tone paint but the Jaguar gets the roof device from the Riley Pathfinder Police car and red paint to make it a 'Fire Chief' car. No, I'd never known a Fire Chief with one either.

Suspension and seats get added in late 1960 and both #208S and #213S extend the life of the cast for a couple more years.The Fire Chief car is otherwise virtually identical but the saloon gets a creamy yellow flavour of paint. Neither the white nor the yellow really worked well and the car never looked as good as a model as it did in the flesh. Corgi did achieve some excellent replicas in 1:43 or thereabouts but this wasn't their best effort.

For all that the saloons sold fairly well, a good #208M being the hardest to find now. The scarcest of the five is #213S - and do remember to check that it has the siren and bell attached! 



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