Lamley Co-Founder David Tilley was lucky enough to get his hands on the latest Matchbox variation rarity. Rare enough to already join on ongoing series on hard-to-find Mattel-era Matchbox variations.
Enjoy...
You are not reading this wrong. This model may be a newbie from Mattel for 2014, but we think it is safe to say that this will be another in a long list of rarities from Matchbox.
This is a 2014 MB12 Cadillac CTS Coupe. After an absence of 2 years we finally see a new example of this model. It debuted in 2011 in silver, and a First Edition 10-pack model in black also appeared the same year, and then.... it vanished! The CTS Wagon continued to be made, so there was not a legal issue with it. Mattel just decided not to use this casting. It was a real shame as it was a lovely addition to the range. When we heard they were finally bringing it back for 2014 we were happy. Very happy! But why is this being called a rarity we hear you ask? We are sure just about everyone who wanted one has found one in stores.
Well, this one comes with a chrome interior. Yes, that’s right. The rarity factor with this model sits inside the model.
The normal “common” issue sits in front of it in this picture. This model is supposed to come with a black interior. 99.9% of them are coming with a black interior. But there is tiny run with an unusual chrome interior.
Having all that chrome does look good. Of course there are some who hate the idea of chrome interiors at all, but they do show off the details very well. As we said, this batch has so far, from what we can tell, only been found sparingly in a single batch of models on ROW short card in central Europe dated G03 which is the third week of January 2014 (this particular example came from Germany). It is not the entire batch either as others dated G03 in that Euro batch have the standard black interior. It really does look like only a handful were done this way. The Americas, Australasia, and the UK have not been noted as finding any of this model. How this particular variation came about is unknown. Perhaps the factory was supposed to be chroming another body part for a different model and somebody accidentally put a tray of CTS interiors in there too. We may never know. But this is proving to be a rather unique and unusual variation, and one likely to only ever be found in that one particular batch.
So it may be worthwhile looking at central Europe if you really need to find an example with the chrome inside.
