Matchbox Superfast MB19-d Lotus Racing Car

The Lotus joined the SuperFast range in 1970 for a brief stay of barely one year. It was packaged in ´G´ boxes as well as USA and Canada blisterpacks with copyright dates between 1969 and 1970.
It was painted with plum coloured clearcoat over silver primer with very little shade variation which can be accounted for by the relative densities of the primer and clearcoat.
The clearcoat shade appears to be yet another unique shade in contrast to the purples of the #22c Pontiac and #22d Freeman and plum shades of the #52c Dodge Charger.
The Lotus was fitted with the same design paper stickers as the previous regular wheels issue although missing both side race number 3 was common, even in sealed blisterpacks.
The Lotus was fitted with the large thick Spiro wheels designed for trucks and subsequently used in huge quantities on both the #13 and #30 Beach Buggys.To date, no standard plum Lotuses have been found fitted with a full set of the same sized 4 spoke thick wheels, although at least 2 cars, one of which pictured here, exist with a 4 spoke front axle and the other has a 4 spoke rear axle. this implies that a quantity of 4 spoke axles were added to the production run due to a shortage of spiro types and we await the inevitable discovery of a plum Lotus with a full set of 4 spoke wheels.
No legitimate cross over examples of SuperFast baseplate with the green Jim Clark paint exist and similarly no plum coloured bodies have been found factory fitted to yellow hub Regular wheels baseplates.
This tooling is not known to have been used again in any other countries after Lesney deleted it in 1971