The Corgi Land Rovers are all very good. The Series 1 Truck Cab is outstanding, it is excellent and this I think is the best variant on it - accurate modelling combined with first rate play value. A winner, a classic. Curious though that Corgi release a new model in 1960 based on the Series 1 Land Rover which was superseded by the Series 2 in 1958 - although the Series 1 continued in production at Solihull for a number of years after the Series 2 came out, especially the longer wheelbase version.

This example is very good - almost as good as you will get without getting silly with mint-in-box examples. I've added some extra shots to show the truck without its tilt and in action recovering a contemporary Triumph TR3a, a diorama which I am sure was repeated often in real life in 1960.

Were Land Rovers with rear jibs a common sight in the early sixties? Our school bus used to pass a garage in Torver, near Coniston that had one. It was pale blue and had New Zealand registration plates, both of these facts should be clues to Corgi collectors and sixties petrol heads in general. This Land Rover had been property of one Donald Campbell. It was used to pull the trailer carrying 'Bluebird' his world speed record boat which he crashed, fatally on the nearby lake. Afterwards I guess the crew and his wife sold off what they could locally. Maybe I should paint one of these and use a set of decals meant for the Corgi Bluebird car in memory of it. As I remember Hadwins, the garage, now a Land Rover dealer called Lakeland Land Rover, used the blue 109" truck cab as their recovery vehicle right into the seventies.

The last time I remember seeing a long wheelbase Landy with a jib on the back was in 2006 in Paris of all places.

diecast.plus.com

---

Corgi 1960 Home

Corgi Home

Site Home