Aaaah, the nineties, a time of alternating excess, woe and intermediate 'meh,' also the time of my 1/18 collection really taking shape and starting to fly. I hadn't yet discovered the joys of a themed collection so my pocket money was spent mainly on whatever looked cool. Today I'm going to do a cumulative Review of three cars, all bound by a shared feature, the folding roof. Back in the nineties 1/18 scale models weren't all that sophisticated, interiors left a lot to be desired, engine bays were only sparsely detailed and you basically had two choices in life, Maisto or Bburago. Then UT came along and things got very serious. Today's review concentrates on three cars, a Maisto BMW 325i, a Maisto Mercedes SLK and a UT Mercedes SLK.
(UT on the left, Maisto to the right)
Design and Accuracy
UT Mercedes: 8/10
Maisto Mercedes: 6/10
Maisto BMW: 6/10
To be fair both Maistos are significantly older than the UT (1995 for the BMW, 1996 for the SLK) but there are quite a few details which are lacking, especially when you compare two examples of the same model of car side by side. Just as an example, the Maisto features brake discs (inexplicably drilled), the UT also has calipers.
The BMW suffers from the same sort of problem, it feels more toy-like than the UT versions of the E36 I have.
Fit and Finish
UT Mercedes: 8/10
Maisto Mercedes: 6/10
Maisto BMW 7/10
All three of these models aren't bad, but the UT is better, panel gaps are tighter, details are better (the plastic of the rear lights for example is streets ahead). Both Maistos are more or less similar, but I've marked the SLK down one point compared to the E36 because of the poor fit of the boot (trunk, for my cross-Atlantic friends) which has always been a bit off.
UT
Maisto
Beemer
(The front license plate holder has gone missing, but considering the car's moved house with me at least seven times, I'm not going to hold it against it!)
Features:
UT SLK: 9/10
Maisto SLK: 9/10
Maisto BMW: 9/10
High across the board, and there's one very good reason for this, FOLDING ROOF ACTION!!! Imagine ten year-old me, in 1995, for whom the height of scale model realism was the bonnet (hood, again for you lot across the Pond) catches on his Bburago F40, seing a Maisto 325 with a FOLDING FABRIC ROOF in the window of his local toy shop! Same goes for the SLKs.
Value
UT SLK: 10/10 (£20 on eBay!)
Maisto SLK: 8/10 (£31 on eBay)
Maisto BMW: 9/10 (£22 on eBay)
I paid full retail for these bad boys when they were still new, the UT was obviously far more expensive, but we're talking about at least 10 years ago, so it's not really fair, so I've based my value points on what I can find on eBay.
Rarity
UT SLK: 6/10
Maisto SLK: 6/10
Maisto BMW: 9/10
Ebay is lousy with the Mercs, but the BMW is a different story, plenty of non-folding roof versions are available, but I could only find one with the roof.
Final Scores
UT SLK: 41/50
Maisto SLK: 35/40
Maisto BMW: 40/50
Proper etiquette would require me to write a conclusion of some sort, however I don't really know what to say about these models. Sure, there's no minute details to lose yourself in, they aren't particularly rare or sought after. But that's not really relevant to me. They're part of my collection and they're great memories of when things were a bit simpler and all I could think about was getting the next model. The BMW in particular has been mine since I was just ten years old, I bought it while on holiday in Italy, took it back to Australia in my luggage, then we moved to Italy and it came back with me, if it could talk it could tell some quite interesting stories!
Just playing about with those folding roofs to take these pictures brought back many memories from my childhood and as far as I'm concerned that's enough to warrant 50/50 across the board...