Matchbox 45c; Ford F3L Group 6 Racing Car

You can see why Matchbox made this model as the car is a fine piece of sculpture - but as a car it was a complete failure, never finishing a single race. The 1968 car had an open roof, the roof came in 1969 when large aerofoils were added.

The Ford P68, also commonly known as the Ford 3L GT or F3L, is a sports prototype racing car model introduced in March 1968. It was designed by Len Bailey, a Ford research engineer, funded by Ford Europe and built by Alan Mann Racing at Weybridge, Surrey, UK. The first competition appearance of a Ford 3L prototype was at the BOAC 500 race at Brands Hatch in Kent. It delivered a good pace, but was criticized for instability at high speeds. It did not finish any of the races in which it was entered, due to mechanical and electrical failures.

Number 45 in the 1-75 Lesney range is one of the few where there was no transitional model. The Ford Corsair (45b) was dropped in 1970 and replaced with a brand new Superfast model - the Ford Group 6 racer. The Ford Group 6 (45c) was released in 1970 and some pre-production models are known in non-metallic dark green. During 1970/71 it was produced in metallic green, switching to metallic lime green in 1971 through to 1973 when it switched to metallic purple.

The rare one is the pre-pro green. Of the production models look out for metallic green with amber windows, pink bases on the metallic green version or a metallic purple version with eyes labels. On the commonly found metallic green version racing number 7 is a little rarer than racing number 45.