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Volvo P1800 |
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You can't look at it without saying 'The Saint'. Corgi put this car into production in 1962, just a year after Volvo so it was still very new and very hot when launched by Corgi. The Saint also started driving this car on TV in 1962, but it was not until 1965 that Corgi painted it white, put Roger Moore in the driving seat and stuck a decal on the bonnet to make it the Saint's car. Apparently Moore liked it so much he bought one, a real one that is, not the Corgi. One or two more anoraky facts, it was only 'P1800' in 1961/62 in 1963 it became the 1800S when production switched to Sweden, the early ones were made in England by Jensen. Also - this model is of a pre-production prototype, the big V on the radiator grille and the cow-horn front bumpers never made it into production. When I saw one with the V and the cow-horns at the 2006 Classic Car show I was about to be Mr Smart Arse and ask some pointed questions about it, when I read the blurb which said the car had been made to look like a pre-production prototype and had the V added for that reason. 228 P1800 The Volvo P1800 was released in July 1962 and was deleted in 1965 when the Saint version was released. The Great Book of Corgi quotes colours as being powder blue or red, according to Ramsay it is red, beige or pink. Blue is wrong, it was only ever red or beige and I think the pink referenced in Ramsay is a faded red one. So red or beige (tan) then. 258 The Saint The variations which affect value are based on the bonnet sticker. The cars made from 1965 to 1968 had a black stick man on a clear decal (transfer), from 1968 to 1970 the decal was changed to a paper label with a white stick man on a red or blue label. After 1970 the model number changed to 201 when Whizzwheels were added. All 258s are valued highly, the cars with the paper stickers, especially the blue paper stickers are very valuable indeed. It always looks to me as if Roger is trying his best to stay in his seat and failing. 201 The Saint, Bonnet label, WhizzWheels My first one of these was a complete dog! It was a total wreck which cost me all of 99p, which was about 98p too much. If you spend time looking around this site you will see some lovely examples of models where I have bitten the bullet and paid out good hard cash to get a model I'm particularly fond of. You'll also see examples where I've not been motivated to spend on a model I don't think worth much. I eventually got this decent one. At this time I was experimenting with dark backgrounds for pictures of white cars - I used emery paper. It is true though the the Whizzwheels models tend to be much more playworn than the others. I guess because they were designed to run far and fast they were far more likely to crash and get seriously damaged. I have seen this bonnet label version with cast wheels which I guess was a transitional model, you will also see (if you are very lucky) the bonnet transfer on WhizzWheels cars.
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Last Edit: 12/06/2024 | Page Added 27/05/2022 |