480 - Chevrolet Taxi Cab

In 1965, Corgi produced an update of the tooling for 1960’s Chevrolet Impala Taxi (Corgi 221) by introducing a Chevrolet Police Patrol Car (Corgi 481) and the brightly coloured Chevrolet Taxi Cab (Corgi 480).The police car was by far the bigger seller, with well over 500,000 produced, making Corgi 480 something of a rarity – especially when accompanied by its original box.

Based on American cars, each model included a driver figure in the left-hand seat. More notably, each had an unusual horizontally split die-cast body – a casting that allowed the top and bottom of the models to be painted separately, without the need for masking.This meant less wastage at the factory due to paint errors and allowed Corgi to create the taxi’s striking red and yellow scheme.