Greenlight 1:64 1967 Ford Custom 500 Taxi

Auto World has been the king lately for making classic American cars that would not normally be replicated in diecast, especially wagon's.  Well, while Greenlight has not gotten to that point yet (for now), they have been making some more mainstream sedans that would go great with TV and Movies and for police car, taxi, or just general family purchases.  These are not high-end muscle cars, either...or are they???  As it turns out they're more like sleepers, and of course i'm talking about the 1967 Chevy Impala sedan and now this new 1967 Ford Custom 500 sedan.

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Greenlight is no stranger to the Ford line having the 1965 Galaxie for years now, but that one was geared toward a sportier moinker with two door coupe and convertible body styles.  Not often do you see a four-door sedan being made despite being the mainstream model for police, taxi's, and suburban families.  The Custom 500 uses similar styling attributes with the Galaxie and Fairlane, but with more trim, eggcrate grille, signal lights between the headlights that are slanted and vertically-laid out, FORD letters on the hood, and chrome bumper with the black California plates front and rear.  On the sides is the Sunshine Cab logo's based on the Taxi used in the movie "Bullitt", gold 6912 numbers, meter rates on the rear doors, and if you look closely you can see the Custom badge on the front fenders.  This is the first time i've seen a taxi in the Greenlight line so it was nice to see the roof light nicely integrated with the correct Meter Taxi badging, and it looks flush with the body despite being a separate piece like light bars on cop cars.

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The rear has FORD and Sunshine Cabs on the trunk, square taillights with integrated silver reverse lamps inside the silver trim, and check out those dual exhausts looking aggressive for a base-model sedan.  Speaking of base so is the yellow steel wheels with chrome hubcaps on tires that are a smidge wide but are perfectly ok.  And that yellow is not to strong unlike today's modern taxi's; it's a more pale yellow that nicely accentuates this car.  The metal base has fine details on the front control arm suspension, dual exhausts, engine and drivetrain, chassis frame, live rear axle, and trunk recess behind the fuel tank (which is located after the rear axle).  The engine underneath is a 289 CID V8 that produces est. 300 hp. through a three-speed manual, floor shifter, with overdrive (the 1967 Impala/Biscayne casting uses a column-shifted automatic transmission).  The hood opens up barely to show the blue engine with detailed silver air cleaner.  The interior is bare bones with vinyl bench seats front and rear with, oddly, lap belts on the front bench, door panel ridges with crank windows, no A/C, AM radio, and a 3-spoke steering wheel with  horizontal speedometer.  Only a floor shifter for the manual spices up this rather basic and bland taxi cab interior.

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While such a nicely-done casting, the strange part is that this casting looks better as a base-model car, or a police car or taxi car, than it does as a custom car with a 427 V8 under the hood.