Matchbox Superfast 29-d Racing Mini

The cover of the 1970 collector catalogue showed Lesney was planning a conventional looking rally Mini however the toy that was released late in 1970 as the new #29 was widened and flattened for better performance on Superfast tracksets.
Only pre-production examples were cast with door handles , hinges & shut lines, however in common with other contemporary toys destined to carry large side stickers like the #8 Wildcat and #62 Rat Rod, the body sides were smoothed to accomodate oversize stickers.
Had Lesney not based their new model on the 1969 Mini mark 2 which featured external door hinges but instead chosen the 1970 Mini mark 3 with internal door hinges, no change to the tooling would have been required to fit stickers smoothly !

Racing Minis were packaged in ´G´ or `I´ boxes as well as all blisterpacks with copyright dates between 1970 and 1975 and all versions of the TP-6 blisterpack 1976-1981.
All Racing Minis were fitted with 9.5 x 4mm 5 slot wheels except for final couple of years of TP-6 issues which featured cut out 5 slot wheels of the same size and a short run with 10 x 4mm with the 10 dots and dashes pattern.
All Racing Minis featured clear untinted glazing. For the first couple of years Racing Minis were fitted with standard ivory coloured seats however in common with many other 1-75 series in 1972 and 1973, vanilla replaced ivory for seats.

For the first couple of years Racing Minis were painted with orange bronze clearcoat over bronze primer however from 1973 this toy was brightened up with tomato orange candycoat over yellow primer and this shade continued throughout the TP-6 production years.
One scarce late TP-6 run was painted glossy pink under its tomato orange candycoat and this variation looks much darker than normal and is very prone to paint chipping or flaking revealing the pink which is a result of the pink being oven baked before the candycoat was applied and as such could be evidence of an aborted pink run for this casting.
Some yellow primered examples are also prone to paint chipping & flaking which reveals a harder oven baked yellow coat underneath. Baseplates were normally just standard plated mazac however one scarce run of silver painted baseplates was made for TP-6.

All Racing Minis packaged as #29 had race 29 stickers fitted with orange borders to the sticker however when these stickers were re-ordered for the two pack series they were printed with green borders to the otherwise unchanged design.
Short runs were made using a circular race #3 sticker or the RAF roundels from the new #14 Mini HaHa which coincidentally featured the same body colour! Collectors should be wary of paying premiums for sticker variations when large quantities of unused original Lesney labels were auctioned off to collectors and new variations have been created by collectors after Lesney stopped UK production.

Lesney shipped unpainted components and axle sets for the Racing Mini to Roly toys of Brazil during the 1970s and large numbers were assembled & painted in a wide variety of colours and fitted with race #29 or various different stickers that were standard on other Lesney models at that time.
No further use of this tooling was made post 1981.