1959 saw the introduction into the Matchbox 1-75 series of the Lesney model of the bank robbers favorite getaway car the superb British built Jaguar 3.4 litre,
As there is some confusion with the later 65b Jaguar being either a 3.4 or 3.8 liter because the box and baseplate both carry different model descriptions that problem was not so on the 65a model as both the toy and the box were both marked as "Jaguar 3.4 litre" but sometimes the 65b can be wrongly paired up with the earlier 65a box.
To begin with the Jaguar was painted a rather dull dark blue gloss which was enhanced with silver trim to the grille, headlights, bumpers and rear number plate and the rear lights can be found trimmed in red, silver or without any trim at all.
The baseplate was originally flat black but was soon changed to gloss black and the trim on the rear number plate was soon omitted.
There was also a run painted in a dark metallic blue which are quite hard to find which probably does not fetch the prices that a rare variation would fetch simply because the colour was so similar to the gloss blue used previously so it would not really stand out as a different variation when in the display cabinet so it tends to get overlooked by the collector, The wheels were always 9 x 20 grey plastic with dome head axles which can have crimped or rounded ends on the later issues.
The baseplate was attached by two round rivets and unusually it did not have a towing hook cast in which can be found on almost all of the other car models issued to date.
There are no known casting variations on this model and apart from the hard to find metallic blue version is fairly common although the issue with the silver rear number plate is not so common,
it was sold in 'B' and 'C' type boxes and was deleted to make way for the larger 65b Jaguar 3.4 / 3.8 in 1962.
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