Matchbox Superfast MB6-d Ford Pick-up

The Ford F100 pick-up truck joined the SuperFast range in 1970 and it was always painted in the same regular wheels colour of red and it was packaged in ´G´ boxes or USA, Canada and worldwide blisterpacks with copyright dates between 1969 and 1972.
The Autosteer from the regular wheels issue was dropped but strong suspension via Lesney´s plastic axle clip spring system was added. Initial releases were usually fitted with 11.2x2mm or less commonly 10.5x2mm 5 slot thin Superfast wheels before production switched to 10x4mm wide 5 slots without any alterations being required to the already wide wheel arches.
The bulk of production was fitted with chrome plate over green plastic front grilles and bumpers, but as with regular wheels issues, a substantial minority had just white plastic alternatives.

The white plastic canopies are identical on all issues of this Ford although mould numbers from 1 - 4 are carried by individual units.
The baseplates for both wheel variations were commonly painted black however large runs were also painted in green using the green paint of the same shade previously used on regular wheels #56 Fiats and #31 Lincolns and alternatively in metallic green of the same shade variations previously used on the #29b Austin Cambridge. At least one factory error has been found painted green on the inside and unpainted on the exposed side!
Plated baseplates are the hardest to find but examination of the tiny handful known (all save 1 example with wide wheels) proves that they really were plated rather than merely unpainted mazak so that makes them legitimate production.

Some baseplates have also been found in shades of charcoal, which was created by mixing up all leftover colours available on the day with some black with one school of thought being that the darkest charcoal colour was produced as a result of running black paint through spray guns which were not cleaned after painting previous colours. All paint used on baseplates prior to 1970 was thinned with solvent before spraying thus appearing much thinner and less glossy than bodyshells.