66a

[YYS4BOB]

[ClOwY]

Lovely motor,were they made with colum gear stick or normal
Gary

[matchboxmarcel]

The DS always has been a very nice car.
Never saw a right hand drive.
The yellow color looks superb.

The DS is still a quite common car on Dutch roads and in Dailey use by some.
I see 1 at least once a month.

11 years ago Matchbox made a new version of which I have all colors.
In 2011 there have been this beautiful yellow color.





marcel

[GHOSTHUNTER]

Never saw a right hand drive. marcel

A wide range of Citroen cars were made in the UK in Slough, Berkshire (next county to me in Buckinghamshire), so all made as right hand drive vehicles.

Ghosthunter.

[ChFalkensteiner]

The example pictured above is not very closely related to the Matchbox 66a, as it is from the third generation which was made from 1968 to 1975.

Introduced in 1959, the Matchbox 66a is a model of the first generation made from 1955 to 1962. I have never seen a plain yellow example of that generation, as most of them come in two-tone paint schemes.

Here are a few pictures of first generation examples I have taken over the years in shades of yellow with differently coloured roofs:



















As it has no interior, it is impossible to tell if the Matchbox 66a was meant to represent a French or British made DS. (In small-scale diecast, only the still current Oxford Diecast model is explicitly based on a British made DS.)

British made DS are fairly rare, as they were made in relatively small quantities. I have only ever seen two confirmed British made examples, both made in 1960:





British production at Slough ceased in 1965. Later on RHD examples were mostly manufactured in Johannesburg, South Africa.

This is a South African made RHD example from 1973 which resides in the Netherlands:

[ChFalkensteiner]

Lovely motor,were they made with colum gear stick or normal
Gary

There were several different options of gearbox and clutch. Most had a semi-automatic system with no clutch pedal and a gear selection lever mounted behind the steering wheel, while others had a more common manual gearbox. A Borg-Warner automatic transmission was also available in later years.

Julian Marsh has provided the following description of the semi-automatic system:

http://www.citroenet.org.uk/miscellaneo ... hange.html

[ChFalkensteiner]

11 years ago Matchbox made a new version of which I have all colors.

Unfortunately Mattel has lost the licence to make this model, so there will be no further new issues. I do not know how this happened; maybe there is some connection with the new small-scale diecast DS 23 introduced by Welly at the start of this year (of which I have yet to find any examples for my own collection).

The new Welly model (number 52381) as shown at Nuremberg Toyfair in February 2019:



If you see one in the wild (in any colour), please let me know.