[REVIEW] Tomica Honda City Turbo

Car Week has concluded, back to our regularly scheduled programming. Today is Land of the Rising Sun-day, and also a Tomica day in my rotation. Today we look at a little car with character. This is Tomica 54-4, the Honda City Turbo. This casting entered the range in February 1983, and had a short run, remaining until May 1984. It’s is just the thing for those who like their cars small:

Tomica has 3 castings of the Honda City: 53-3, 53-4, 53-5, between these, there are a couple dozen variants. I suspect this is a model with a cult following. I have a few of these, and this came out of the pile at random. Let’s proceed and take a look. This is a textbook example of 1980s Tomica - chrome grille/lights, nice tampos, acurately detailed interior, and of course it has the crisp glazing and springy suspension we know and love. Scale is claimed to be 1:57, likely accurate as usual, although I am surprised it isn’t larger - this casting has a chunky feel to it, perhaps due to the real car being somewhat tall, a slightly upscaled model will feel similar. In terms of casting detail, it seems just a little less sharp than 70s models, but there is still plenty of material to entertain your eyes. The doors don’t open, but there’s something to make up for that, which we will see later. From all angles, there’s no mistaking this car for anything else:

Front and rear have similar detail:

This was an era when bases alternated between metal and plastic, seemingly at random. This model has a metal base, which gives appreciable heft, and contains ample detail:

This example is lucky enough to live in its nice original black box:

And now for the fun - the opening part is the rear hatch:

Yep, there’s a Motocompo in the back:

This is another one I am certainly pleased to have in my collection. I can imagine these castings are popular, and I wouldn’t mind a few more for my own hoard. The Motocompo detail really makes it for me, it’s just a cool model:

And a couple 1:1s from wikimedia and b-cles.jp, along with a very 80s Motocompo promo piece from chasingmotorcycles.com: