MBX Off-Road | `85 Porsche 911 Rally

Porsche as a brand competed in motorsport in the past and has developed their cars through competition with new technologies. They’ve competed in the 24 Hour of Le Mans and other racing events. Most notably they also competed in Rally Sport such as the Paris-Dakar Rally with their Porsche 953 that has become iconic on its own right. Matchbox has produced several licence Porsche models, but for 2019 they went off-road and in honor of that famous winning car in 1984.

They produced the 1985 Porsche 911 Rally that also appears to be inspired from a modified car owned by Patrick Long, which was auctioned sometime in 2016. This casting uses the aesthetics of the Patrick Long 1985 Porsche 911 Rally car that also uses the “Rothmans” sponsor colors as its livery. Though Matchbox doesn’t put much detail in their international carded packaging it is safe to say there are some inspirations that they get their ideas in putting this car together.

The photo realistic card art of the car simply would call you if you’re into rally sport as impressive seeing a Porsche 911 as a rally car is not what you see every day. Usually, Porsche models are more of a street performance car than being used as an off-road machine and if ever it were to be competed in an all-terrain competition changes on a road car needs to be changed besides the size of wheels.

Key Features of the Porsche 911 Rally below:

Year Release: 2019 | New Casting
Base Color: Blue | Plastic
Window: Clear
Tampo: Blue sides; Number 13, Matchbox & Porsche
Interior: Blue









MBX Off-Road | 85’ Porsche 911 Rally

There’s something different about a Porsche 911 in a rally themed aesthetics and that’s what makes diecast car collecting interesting as most of them produced by Matchbox. Some of them are fictional and not really based on a real world car often times it is an amalgamation of ideas thrown in that were inspired from different source material to produced it into a new car.

The Porsche 911 from 1985 is a popular car from that era and it was produced originally from 1963 to 1989 with different variations from its production. This rally version may have taken inspiration from two sources namely the Rally aesthetics was based from a Porsche fan namely Patrick Long’s white 1985 Porsche 911 Rally and the other is the livery that is an inspiration from the “Rothmans” sponsor colors of the 1984 Paris-Dakar Rally winning car which is from the Porsche 953.













Less Details More Racing

In-packaging the attraction of this rally car appears impressive with the card art, but once you remove it you’ll find the car lacking a lot of details. Besides that the tampographe blue sides doesn’t say its “Rothmans” but it pays tribute to that and in place is the word “Matchbox” and "Porsche" with less real world sponsors.

The lack of details of the spare tire and tools in the roof as wells as the headlamps in the front make the car is a bit bare even though the taillight details are painted. It still shows noticeable white paint than the blue side sponsors colors. Matchbox could have capitalized in making it more believable if there were more details. But surely production cost was limited to giving it what it had on the budget.



Overall the new casting is superb but it lacked details although collectors would scoop this up since it is a Porsche and it is a Rally car that is not the norm on a sports car like this. Some of those customizers have remedied the lack of details in this car namely painting the spare wheel on the roof and other things that made it attractive in the product art on the packing card as well as in the Power Grab "Boxed" Edition.

“'85 Porsche 911 Rally” is numbered "MB65" overall die-cast under the "MBX Off-Road" series for the mainline released for Matchbox in 2019 and it was acquired at Toys R'Us Greenbetl 5 for PhP 120.00 Pesos ($3.42 AUD **) during the month long Holiday Sale that ended on 12 January 2020.

Matchbox is distributed and sold in the Philippines by Richprime Global Inc originally retailed at PhP 149.75 Pesos ($4.28 AUD **). Matchbox is distributed and sold in the Philippines by Richprime Global Inc!

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