The first Corgi diecast cars began appearing around 1954 and the first car produced by the company was the Austin Cambridge. What many people don’t realize is that it took quite some time to get the casting process perfected. In fact, it took somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 years before that problem was solved. In actuality, a company called Playcraft was formed and was the sister company of Mettoys. Playcraft launched the Corgi brand in 1956 and began producing the first Corgi diecast cars branded under that name.
Company owners realized that producing a line of diecast cars was not simply enough to command a market share and they wanted to produce something that no one else was doing and so they developed a line of cars with glazed windows in them in 1957. The first gift set ever released in the fifties sold more than 2 million sets. Then throughout the sixties they began releasing the classic cars as we know and collect them to this day. The sets produced during this time period included James Bond’s Aston Martin and Corgi diecast cars began winning awards including a Highest Standards Award from the Toy Retailers Association.

By 1968 … Read the rest