The Lesney model of the Ford corsair joined the Matchbox 1-75 series in early 1965, It was always painted pale yellow and it had silver trim to the headlights and grille.
The first run had a silver-grey painted baseplate and all later issues had a silver plated baseplate, The baseplate also included the front & rear bumper detail, had the grille & headlights been included the silver trim would not have been needed.
9 x 36 black plastic wheels are the usual issue for the corsair but a short run was fitted with 9 x 36 grey plastic wheels.
The interior was usually red plastic which incorporated the tow hitch in the molding but a few are known to have been issued with a white interior and these are believed to be pre production models. The interior has the number 45 inscribed on the bottom and it was the exact same interior that was used on the 56b Fiat 1500.
I recently saw some old newsreel footage taken in the Lesney factory during 1965/66 and the footage shows dozens of corsairs going down the production line, The odd thing is that the corsairs don't appear to have been fitted with interiors, I am wondering if this is an unlisted variation because some time ago I won a corsair on ebay, the auction picture was very bad but I thought it may possibly show a white interiored corsair so I took a gamble, I won the car and it arrived it did not have an interior fitted at all but it did have a silver grey base which seemed to confirm my theory, sadly the baseplate is broken and it can be removed fairly easily so I don't know if it ever had an interior or not, If you happen to have a silver grey baseplated corsair without an interior please let me know and I'll add it to the listing.
The plastic interior also has a minor variation, looking at the baseplate just behind the front wheels the interior may or may not have two short extensions, see the photo below for details.
The white interiored corsair is very rare, the silver grey base and grey plastic wheeled variations are hard to find, the regular black wheeled version is very common.
The corsair was packaged in 'E' and 'F' type boxes, it was not considered suitable for conversion to superfast wheels and was deleted in 1970.
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