Matchbox Superfast MB69-c Rolls Royce Silver Shadow

The #69 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow convertible joined the 1-75 series as one of the 5 brand new castings released in good time for Christmas 1969.
It was initially packaged in an ´F´ box although the 1970 ´G´boxes were used for the vast majority produced alongside all blisterpacks with copyright dates from 1969 to 1972.
Pre-productions exist in the bright #33 Muira yellow fitted with ivory seats and at least one colour trial still exists in metallic green. However, the chosen colour of metallic blue clearcoat over silver primer was applied for the first 2 years of production before being recoloured gold, which has two distinct shades which are dependant on whether either the silver primer or the gold primer has been applied under the clearcoat. The final run was a distinctly lime tinted gold clearcoat over silver primer
Pre productions sometimes featured clear untinted windscreens however all volume production featured orange tinted windscreens.

Seats were dried blood colour on all blue issues and on all the narrow wheel arch gold bodies, with a switch to vanilla icecream coloured seats early into the wide arched body production. These were not the traditional ivory or offwhite colour which becomes very apparent when lined up with other models featuring ivory or off white seats.
The folded soft top was gray plastic on some pre-pros, tan on all blue and the earliest gold production with black plastic becoming standard at the time production switched to vanilla coloured seats. As these components are easily swapped between castings allowing common black folded roofs to be fitted by collectors to any variation with dried blood coloured seats even if they never left the factory on any blue or thin wheeled bodies.

The body casting featured the opening boot and plated front grille castings from the #24 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow although oddly Lesney chose not to share baseplates or seats from the #24 even though this new casting came shortly after the design & release of the #55 and #73 Mercurys which were prime examples of shared components.
The body casting was modified by early 1972 to include enlarged wheel arches to allow wide 10x4mm 5 slot wheels to be fitted without impairing the standard plastic sprung suspension. All previous issues which included all blue bodies plus the first run of gold bodies were fitted with solid or hollow 11x2mm thin 5 slot wheels. Very scarce cross overs exist with thin wheels under widened arches.

The majority of baseplates were painted standard glossy black however old stocks of obsolete colours from the regular wheels range were used up on the final blue run and most of the gold production. These were thinned down #39b Pontiac primrose, #45 Corsair primrose, #50 Commer tan, YesterYear silver gray and various shades of charcoal made from mixing up odd opened quantities of leftover paint.
Lesney supplied unpainted unassembled components as used throughout 1970 production of this casting for painting and assembley by Roly Toys of Brazil. Even though Rolls Royce kept this design in production largely unchanged for over 20 years Lesney made no further use of this tooling beyond 1973.