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Found this one a couple months back.

Hello and welcome!

Your Thunderbird is really interesting. The front axle looks perfect, so the question must be whether it came out of the factory with that back axle and wheels. On these and the 27c Cadillac the rear axles aren't crimped because the body holds the wheels in place. It's relatively easy to slip a new axle and wheels in. Your axle looks like it might be copper, but this is a known, if mysterious, variant on the Thunderbird and Cadillac (see here).

So does the end of the rear axle look like it's been cut at home or in the factory? Here's a close-up of one of mine. It's hard to see but it looks like it was cut in some sort of circular cutter, leaving a raised section in the middle (so not sawn straight through or cut with pliers). I think this circular action makes sense as these would be cut on the normal axle cutting machine, and Lesney wouldn't have wanted burrs or a squashed section because this would be hard to peen.
What does yours look like?

Hi Dr Jeep, Thanks for the reply. This is the best I could do with close up pictures of the rear axle ends, hope it helps...All the best, Al

Hi nice model, can you tip the base side to side. Seems to be quite a big gap one side, also the rear base rivet seems to have a mark around it or is it just shadow.
Cheers J

Hi nearlymint, Do these pics show what you were talking about?...Thanks, Al

Yes thank you must just be the tool mark, is the base loose to tip or fairly tight?
Just shows quality control must have been asleep on this one.
J

The base is tight.

Welcome to the forum alsal293, I have followed your ebay listings for many years.

It is quite common for the 75a to have a mix of wheels where the front two are a different profile to the rear pair. What is interesting is that the rear pair are the often the fatter wheel that match the type from alsal923. It is the fatter wheel for some reason ends up on the rear and the same profile mismatch occurs with spw, gpw and bpw.
Given the bpw and the gpw follow each other in the codes and that the front wheels were fitted to the base plates then stored in bins my vote is that this is a factory error, but quite unique on a bpw version.
On my own 75a’s there is no movement to the base and any attempt to fit a rear axle would almost certainly leave a mark on the wheel arch, something that is not evident on alsal923 model.
On several of my 75a, either mint or play-worn the gap between the base plate and body is greater on one side, just like the one shown.

This also looks like the nice dark peach colour and while the four wheel bpw version is a sort after code, this is an interesting error. Thanks for sharing this one.

To complete the picture on this one could you tell us if the silver trim is on the lights, grille, front bumper, rear bumper and if the tail lights are trimmed in red please.

Bert

Hi Bert, As you can see in the pics the model has silver trim to the headlights and grille and red trim to the 2 rear lights...All the best, Al

Thanks for the extra pictures of the axle ends. The right side end certainly looks the same as mine. It's harder to tell about the left end.

yellowfoden wrote:On my own 75a’s there is no movement to the base and any attempt to fit a rear axle would almost certainly leave a mark on the wheel arch

I have a really nice silver 27c Cadillac where the rear wheels have been replaced with wheels from a different make. I think that sometimes the rear axles must have been cut just a little too short and this would have been enough to let the wheels fall off, perhaps with a little help from an enthusiastic young owner. 2 mm would make all the difference, I think, and even 1 mm might be enough. It would be easy enough to pop a couple of different wheels in, and it would make sense to fit the wider ones here, so that they didn't come loose again.

I agree with Bert, though: there's a good chance this one came out of the factory like this, though I wonder if it might have been put together deliberately by a worker just for fun, rather than being a genuine error item. I'm sure it's not a modern fake, as it's hard to see why someone would spoil the sought-after black-wheeled Thunderbird to make it.