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Did anyone else notice this strange auction? It was for a promotional 5d Routemaster bus – but one advertising an exhibition which took place in November 1971, i.e. long after the model had been deleted from the range.
The seller wrote (after I’d corrected the spelling, punctuation and syntax) about it as follows: “Here we have a very, very rare Matchbox Lesney Routemaster promotional bus from 1971. It was given away at the International Building Exhibition at Olympia, London. I cannot state how rare this bus is. I have had it for many years and it was given to me by the caretaker for the builders’ federation in Liverpool off a member of staff in the 1970s, Mr Hope. The bus is in great condition for its age. This meeting did take place and I was told the busses were unboxed.”.
Examination of the photographs shows the model to consist of a type 4 baseplate paired with a type 2 body, i.e. the very last production variation, and the labels state that the exhibition lasted 11 days!
So what do we have here? How does a model withdrawn in 1969 end up advertising an Exhibition held in late 1971? If we accept the provenance at face value (and that may be a big if), the question has to be, how did the organising committee come by sufficient 5d models (for it would seem likely that they were either given away/sold as souvenirs or, perhaps more likely, were sent out early on with promotional literature to prospective exhibitors) to do whatever it was that needed to be done with them?
Did Lesney do a special run for them (seems unlikely, especially with all the pressure on the factory to get SF models made and shipped)? Did they have a stock of models left over from a similar promotional campaign in 1970 (seems unlikely that they would have enough). Why didn’t the organisers use the SF74b Daimler instead?

Interesting that it lay dormant and undiscovered among the scrutiny of collectors here for 46 years.

Could be from a vendor like color comp (and another company) who had plain YYs available long after production ended.

I found this, odd that it has the same text but in a different order, I don't think these labels were made to be fitted to the bus, they just happened to be the right size.

I felt the dissonance between the model and the date, but it was intresting and not to expensive, so I bought it.

So the final conclusion is: this is a CODE 3 model.

Thanks, Peter

Superfast models have been used for Code 3 purposes long after they were issued so it is totally feasible that this model was also used as a Code 3 in 1971. They would probably have been cheap models to acquire at that time, and seeing as the Exhibition was in London a red bus fitted the bill nicely.