The Lesney model of the Dodge dumper truck joined the Matchbox 1-75 series towards the end of 1966.
It had a red body and tipper, the tipper hinged on a regular dome head axle pin that was also painted red because it was assembled before it was painted.
The windows were green tinted plastic and it was fitted with 12.5 X 48 black plastic wheels on dome head axles with rounded ends.The baseplate was chromed plastic and on early issues the baseplate ran full length of the body and it was fixed in place by three round rivets and by the grille & headilght detail that were molded in as part of the baseplate molding that located into openings in the front of the body,
Later it was fitted with a towing guide and on the final issues the baseplate was modified by shortening it so it now stopped just behind the middle axle and now it was attached by just one rivet.
The reason behind the baseplate modification is because the tipper body was held in the up position by an extension to the baseplate that gave it the friction to hold the tipper up,
This did not work so well so later issues had the shortened baseplate,
At the time the chassis was adapted to fit a hydrosleve to supply the friction, this was done by widening the gap between the chassis rails to fit the hydrosleve which worked much better than the earlier method,
There was one other minor casting modification and that was to the rests on the bottom of the tipper bed, these were originally 1mm thick but were widened to 1.5mm thick on later issues, this modification was carried out before the baseplate was shortened.
The Dodge was converted to superfast wheels in 1970 and recoloured to blue body & yellow tipped which is not an easy variation to find so may not have been a very good seller,
The dodge was sold in 'E' and 'F' type boxes and is fairly common, there are no rare variations and after a short stay in the superfast range it was deleted in 1971.
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