English. 1962. Made by Walkers Westway in England. This Vickers VC-10 model is highly sought after by collectors for her exquisitely beautiful lines and interesting history. The performance of the VC-10 was such that it achieved the fastest crossing of the Atlantic by a subsonic jet airliner of 5 hours and 1 minute. This is a record that was held for 41 years, until February 2020 when a British Airways Boeing 747 broke the record at 4 hours 56 minutes. Only Concorde was faster. The VC-10 was in service from 1962 until 1981 with Airlines all over the world, and continued to fly with the RAF until 2013 for a service history totalling 50 years! In fact, many Concorde flight crew actually earned the vast majority of their hours in the sky on the VC-10. This beautiful model was handcrafted by the Artisans of Westway circa 1962. She was shipped to a travel agency in eastern Ontario in 1963. In those days, the aircraft WAS the destination, but the folks lucky enough to afford a JET airliner ticket had to somehow be shown just how luxurious this brand-new aircraft really was in an era where few people owned TV sets. This was the very dawn of the Jet Age, and long before air travel was commonplace. People dressed up to fly, and were served world class meals by Stewardesses in white gloves, on the finest of silverware. Thus, it became a standard Airline industry marketing practice to woo customers by showing off cutaway models of their most exciting (and brand new) jets. Only the highest performing travel agencies were given the privilege of being "loaned" these models. One of the very best model makers in the world entrusted to make 100% accurate large-scale cutaways was Walkers Westway. In fact, the company still exists today (now known as Westway)! The glass Perspex is perfect. The tripod is original. The glass passenger windows are perfect. The interior has no floating/loose parts. There are no dents in the fuselage. There was interior lighting, but this no longer works. LEDs can be easily installed to remedy this if desired (that is, if the owner wants to break the factory white putty covering the machine screws just behind the flight deck). There is a very slight "spider-web" fracture in the paint, barely visible under bright light between tail and the passenger compartment, around the fuselage. It is purely cosmetic, and not a structural defect. There is a missing fairing along the trailing edge of one wing, a small scratch in the other wing, some very minor decal loss and pin head sized paint chips on one wingtip. For a cutaway model of this size (or any size) to survive all these decades in such amazing condition is nothing short of a miracle. She can be displayed with or without wings attached. The original wing root cover plates are still with the model for a wingless display. In this case, BOAC apparently forgot about their beautiful VC-10 cutaway on-loan in eastern Ontario. And so it was, in November of 1963, she was tucked away in the attic of the travel agency by the owner for safe-keeping, until BOAC came calling. However, she was soon forgotten there, out of sight and mind... Over 5 decades passed... When the building was sold in December of 2021, she was miraculously rediscovered by the very SAME man who placed her there around the time of JFK's assassination. BOAC became British Air, and the Vickers VC-10 now belongs to the Ages (and to whomever becomes this model's next owner)! Only one other Westway BOAC VC-10 is known to exist in the world. Her sister ship was auctioned in California several years ago, but that model suffered paint damage, and does not have a cutaway view of the fore and aft cargo hold, nor does that model sport landing gear, as this one does! 88" (L) x 70" (W). Height on stand to fuselage is 51". Overall height: 61". Wings: 22".