Matchbox Superfast MB45-c Ford Group 6

The Ford F3L Group 6 was the Ford design that attempted but failed to replace the GT40 with an all conquering race winner. However when Lesney tooled the #45 in 1969 this car still had the chance to make as big a mark on racing history as the huge selling #41 Ford GT40.

Pre-production #45 Fords appear in the earliest SuperFast promotional pictures painted both white unlabelled and emerald green race #7 and this casting looked very right from the start for tracksets. Some of these pre-productions were fitted with the first SuperFast wheels, 11 x 2mm solid 5 slots although the majority and all subsequent production of #45 Group 6s had 11.5 x 4mm 5 slots except for the final 1975 run which had newer 11.5 x 5mm wide wheels with 5 small slots. Most emerald green Ford Group 6s known in collections today have been found in Germany which evidences more than penny numbers were produced as some clearly were boxed and sold in shops.

During its relatively long and successful 6 year production run as #45, the Ford Group 6 was packaged in 'F', 'G' and 'I' boxes as well as all blisterpacks with copyright dates between 1969 and 1975 including the 'Broom Stick' and G3 giftset.

Lesney selected emerald green clearcoat over gold primer for the first few years in the 1-75 series.This shade can vary considerably with the thickness of the clearcoat, with double coat being darkest and lighter being a single rather thin covering with the primer shadow showing through. Cars packaged in F boxes can be found with rare plated unpainted baseplates before black became standard for the vast majority of this body colour made.Just before the end of the final emerald production run Lesney began painting baseplates using obsolete regular wheels paint (23d caravan pink or 38b Victor yellow) and mixed leftovers (dark gray).These 3 shades or standard black appeared on all lime issues. Final recolour metallic burgundy toys came with black, 56b Fiat green or plated bare metal baseplates.

Smaller round race #7 stickers seen on pre-pros were initially fitted to the noses of the first run, although this label was re-ordered on a rectangular background for ease of fitting without appearing lopsided for a much larger quanitity.Once the rectangular race #7 stickers were used up all future orders for the remaining 5 years of production were rectangular race #45 which made it very obvious which casting these stickers were designed for! G3 gifset stickers can be found on emerald clearcoat or lime cars with varying arrangements and degrees of completeness.

All production of Ford Group 6s featured the same chrome plated plastic engine except for a small proportion of lime or burgundy cars with unplated gray plastic engines. Ivory seats were standard until that colour plastic was replaced across the 1-75 series with vanilla or white seats, both shades appearing on all burgundy issues. Glazing was clear untinted on almost all emerald clearcoat cars although a tiny handful are known fitted with the amber glazing intended for all of the lime clearcoat over gold primer which became the standard body colour by 1972. The earliest now very scarce metallic lime cars were a darker shade and can be found with clear untinted glazing. As with all Lesney tinted windows, the degree of amber tint can vary considerably.

The final recolour for the 1-75 series was to metallic burgundy, although at least one often overlooked short run which is not particularly easy to find today was painted in the #39 Clipper shade of metallic magenta.Small quantities of both the burgundy and the magenta 45c have been found with the ´eyes´ sticker designed for the #31d Volksdragon.
One unlisted casting variation can be found on the last issues where the 'pat app' was removed from the base description, This casting variation has not been included in the variation table until we have the full details.

For most of its run in the 1-75 series, all components of this toy were shipped to Brazil for painting and assembley by Roly Toys in colours of their own choice with both clear and amber glazing and both race #7 and race #45 stickers.
This tooling was revived in the 1980s for the Super GT series with opaque black plastic glazing and baseplates, the English made examples being red (BR20) or white (BR19) with the tooling going to China for life after Lesney.......