Matchbox Superfast MB55-d Mercury Police car

The Mercury Park Lane Police sedan was an early 1970 addition to the SuperFast range initially packaged in an ´F´ box but more commonly found in a ´G´ box.
This toy was also packaged in all USA or Canada blisterpacks with copyright dates between 1969 and 1971.
As with the autosteer issues, all SuperFast Police Mercurys were bright white and can be found with either blue or red roof lamps, although the scarcity factor is reversed,with red being standard and blue much harder to find and worth more too!
The only changes to this casting compared with the regular wheels autosteer issue involved the baseplate which was altered to give a greater ride height so that the springy plastic suspension worked effectively with the larger Superfast wheels which were initially solid or hollow 11x2mm 5 slots but more commonly 10.5x2mm solid or hollow 5 slots.
The SuperFast baseplates originally stated ´No. 55 or 73´ however a small proportion of the final run were made after the tooling had been altered to ´No 59 or 73´ once the decision had been made to use this tooling to replace the Galaxie Firechief.
So during 1971 this tooling became exclusively used for the #59 Firechief which is examined under #59.