(Matchbox Ferrari Berlinetta on ebay)
By now you’ll have read fellow Lamley contributor Alex Winson’s take on the Matchbox 75a Ferrari Berlinetta. Alex showed his beautiful regular wheels version; here’s my Superfast one to complete the story.
I’ve had a Berlinetta in my collection since I was a kid. The first was a battered secondhand one that I repainted in green – one of my first customs! No photos I’m afraid, its slapdash paint finish is lost to history.
I picked up this red Superfast Berlinetta a few years ago as an upgrade to a playworn example. Even though the Superfast wheels are less accurate than the wire ones, it’s still a beautiful model, in my view, and I love the artwork on the B-type box.
The Berlinetta switched to red and onto the new wheels for the first full year of Superfast in 1970. But as often happened during this transitional period, a few of the old-colour models – in this case, green Ferraris – emerged on the new wheels. These are the rarest and most valuable of the Matchbox Berlinettas, and I’m indebted to a friend for allowing me to show an example from his amazing collection. There are even variations of this model: shades of green, and with or without a silver-sprayed grille.
The Berlinetta lasted only one year as a Superfast model and was replaced in the 1971 range by the Alfa Carabo. At least it wasn’t butchered to accommodate wider rims, a fate suffered by some other pre-Superfast designs. Matchbox later used No.75 for another iconic red Ferrari, the Testarossa, when it joined the range in 1986!
(find Matchbox Ferrari Berlinetta on eBay)
Thanks for the write-up! This has been a Lesney favorite of mine since childhood. I now have a decent set of these including red with regular wheels and green with Superfast wheels, as well as other variations. The 250 GT Luso is enormously gorgeous in real life, and even came in a similar shade of green!
Interesting seeing the two back to back. Seems the SF lost the exhaust, and the headlights gained an unsightly hood over them.