In 1966 Lesney updated the popular 55b Ford Fairlane police car which had only been in the Matchbox 1-75 series for three years with the 55c Ford Galaxie police car.
The Galaxie was painted white and it had an ivory coloured plastic interior which had a driver and a tow hook molded in, As strange as it may seem having a tow hook on a police car the explanation is that the interior was probably used on other models and the interior for the 20c taxi looks like it is the same one as in the Galaxie so there are probably others that also use this interior.
The Galaxie had a silver plated baseplate which it shared with the 59c Galaxie fire chief car so the baseplate was numbered 55/59, The baseplate included the grille and bumpers detail in the casting so silver trim was not needed on this model.
The early issues were enhanced with 'police' decals on the bonnet (hood) and badge decals on the doors, The decals were later changed for labels but there was some cross over so models fitted with a mix of decals and labels are not that unusual
The windows were clear plastic and were molded with the two front windows in the open position, The roof light is usually red tinted plastic but a short early run were fitted with blue dome lights which is quite a rare variation. There were no casting, wheel or colour variations which keeps this one simple, In 1968 after just two years in the range the Ford was replaced by a slightly larger Mercury police car which kept to the same colour scheme and decals as the Galaxie, Surprisingly the Galaxie fire chief car which was also introduced in 1966 was kept in the range for a further three years and was converted to superfast wheels in 1970 but only stayed in the superfast range for a year until it was deleted in 1971.
The Galaxie was packaged in 'E' type boxes, It is a fairly common model but the one with the blue dome light is rare.
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