Lamley Daily: Matchbox Cadillac chromed CTS

Model: Matchbox MB815 Cadillac CTS Coupe

Release: 2014 MB12

eBay link: Matchbox CTS Coupe

Why is it in the collection: The chrome interior

The Cadillac CTS Coupe. One of two different castings of the 2nd generation Cadillac CTS vehicle. The only one of the three generations that was sold in anything beyond a regular sedan, and Matchbox made both the wagon and coupe versions of it. But considering they went to all that trouble in creating 2 versions of it, they really didn’t do a lot with them. The Wagon arrived first in 2010, and the coupe followed in 2011.

I liked the look of this one, with the pointy rear end. But after the debut year in silver and a 1st Edition 10-pack version in black it disappeared. The Wagon popped back up in 2013 so I held out hope. Sure enough, 2014 and finally a red version of this one.

I picked one up, but I started hearing rumours. Somebody had found one with a chrome interior. But all the interiors I was finding in the UK were black. You do a Google search on the internet and most pictures tend to come from USA, which was selling on long card, and yes, everything was being sold with a black interior.

Then I heard something about Germany. I took a gander on eBay’s German site. There were a few for sale on ROW short card there. Nothing out of the ordinary. But one had me curious.

The seller only had one picture. A direct straight front view. The car would be sideways in the blister. But the seats just poked out over the door. The picture wasn’t great, the blister had some flash partially covering the seats. But I squinted, and stared intently at my computer screen. It was a dull picture, but I thought it was perhaps chrome. It was about to finish, and nobody had put in a bid. So I did the opening bid for a few Euros. I won, it was sent over to me.

Oh yeah. Chrome interior. Check out the license plate. WRK H1R4. Loosely translates to “work hard”. It’s as if they knew this unusual variant was coming and were giving us a sneaky heads up.

Why they made a tiny batch with a chrome interior is unknown. My guess is they were supposed to be chroming a base section for another model, and accidentally picked up a sheet of these interiors rather than a sheet of the bases for that other model. Mistakes happen. Mistakes are fun for us. Because they would rather not want to waste the interiors that had been chromed. So they used them anyway. They are not easy to find at all. Germany seemed to have been THE place to find them at the time.

I love it when we get stuff like this. The random variation model and the mad rush in trying to figure out where it would be located, trying to source it etc. It is one of the fun parts of the hobby.