Corgi Toys - Road Rover

Road Rover

Early in the company's history Corgi Toys became embroiled in a minor controversy. The Corgi design team had been working closely with the Rover Car Company with a view to producing a model of the Road Rover, a new car which was being developed by Rover. This was to be a four wheel drive off-roader with a greater level of luxury than the existing Land Rover. Unfortunately the project was cancelled during 1958, and it would take until the release of the iconic Range Rover in 1970 for the idea to reach fruition.

Meanwhile, Corgi had got as far as producing several pre-production examples of the stillborn car after receiving drawings from Rover as early as February 1957 and had planned to issue the model, which carried the article number 212, to coincide with the real vehicle's launch. To maintain secrecy within the factory and amongst out-sourced producers during the design of the pre-production models, two baseplate moulds were made, one carrying the inscription 'Rover 90' and the other for a mythical car called 'Road Hawk'. The half of the baseplate carrying both '90' and the word 'Hawk' were then machined off and the remaining halves featuring words 'Road' and 'Rover' combined to produce the Road Rover baseplate. Only six examples were finished making this the rarest of all Corgi Toys products. The only known existing example from Corgi's Head Designer Marcel Van Cleemput's personal collection was sold during the 1990s.