WHEEL ERROR #27

[motorman]

Whats going on here? This #27 is very unusual picked up on ebay this week. Firstly it has wide wheels with small 5 slot foiled hubs on one side (which i have never seen before) and secondly a rear dot/dash foiled hub on the other side and a partial dot/dash on the other wheel. Lastly it has smoked glass.

I would love to hear your thought. The base rivets are sound.

[nearlymint]

Hi Alex, does the dot-dash wheel have an inner rim. Can you check the wheels against another dot-dash just to compare.
J

[motorman]

Hi Alex, does the dot-dash wheel have an inner rim. Can you check the wheels against another dot-dash just to compare.
J

J the wheel has the inner rim. My whole collection is in storage so the only other model with d/d wheels that i have to hand is a #74 Mercury Cougar Villager beater which i note has smooth wheels with no inner rim.

[fixer]

It's that dark tint that gets me , the wheels could be from another model and mixed up , but the window is model specific and I have never seen one like it before

[nearlymint]

Hi Alex, does the dot-dash wheel have an inner rim. Can you check the wheels against another dot-dash just to compare.
J

J the wheel has the inner rim. My whole collection is in storage so the only other model with d/d wheels that i have to hand is a #74 Mercury Cougar Villager beater which i note has smooth wheels with no inner rim.

Hi Alex, I thought it had the inner rim from the picture. I have checked 5 more models with dot-dash wheels and none of them have an inner rim.
Are there holes in the wheel where there is no foil?
J

[GHOSTHUNTER]

Nice oddity Alex.

The wheels on the near-side first appeared on a few models in the 1971 pocket catalogue. More models had them fitted for 1972, even #24 Silver Shadow is shown with them in the 1972 trade catalogue and a lot of the Ford Capri models have them.

'Dot-Dash' wheels were fitted to the Mercedes in 1976, not sure when the tinted glazing appeared.

GHOSTHUNTER.

[motorman]

Hi Alex, does the dot-dash wheel have an inner rim. Can you check the wheels against another dot-dash just to compare.
J

J the wheel has the inner rim. My whole collection is in storage so the only other model with d/d wheels that i have to hand is a #74 Mercury Cougar Villager beater which i note has smooth wheels with no inner rim.

Hi Alex, I thought it had the inner rim from the picture. I have checked 5 more models with dot-dash wheels and none of them have an inner rim.
Are there holes in the wheel where there is no foil?
J

J, looking through a loupe i can see holes on the dashes and slight depressions on the dots. I note that it appears to be correct 10 d/d foiling same as my beater #74. Very strange indeed.

[nearlymint]

Maybe some early dd wheels have this inner rim, I will keep looking now to see if I come across any.
J

[motorman]

Nice oddity Alex.

The wheels on the near-side first appeared on a few models in the 1971 pocket catalogue. More models had them fitted for 1972, even #24 Silver Shadow is shown with them in the 1972 trade catalogue and a lot of the Ford Capri models have them.

'Dot-Dash' wheels were fitted to the Mercedes in 1976, not sure when the tinted glazing appeared.

GHOSTHUNTER.

Thanks for the info Kevin. The tinted window is unusual.

[ChFalkensteiner]

I believe that this right side rear wheel is most likely not a true dot-dash wheel but a 5 square wheel like the other three, only with some of the chrome missing. The right side front wheel is also missing some chrome, but to a lesser extent than the right side rear wheel. I have seen similar occurrences on 5 square wheels on other models before; this may be regarded as some kind of production fault in which the chrome application was incomplete.

Medium-width 5 square wheels first appeared on some of the models reissued for the Japanese market from 1977 onward and later on in multipacks. The Mercedes was one of those models reissued on that occasion (having been out of production since 1973), and I have always regarded it as a likely candidate to be found with these wheels, but until now I had not seen such an example.

True dot-dash wheels were never fitted to the Mercedes while it was made in England. It only got those wheels when it was reissued once again from Hungarian production in 1987, and the later examples made in Bulgaria from 1991 onward also have dot-dash wheels.

The tinted windshield on this model is new to me as well.

I reckon this is an example from very late English production, most likely issued in an MP-1 multipack in 1979 approximately.