Input from the Real Rodders

[JohnnyGMachine]

Cool another diecast car designer!!



As not only an industrial designer, I am a car guy and collect diecast as well. I am a product development guy here at GMP Diecast and we developed the 1:18 1968 Camaro Street Fighter. A '69 will soon be out as some know (and, no I do not have any sneak peaks - yet).

As a collector I have a few of our high end $100+ 1:18 scale diecasts.
I think personally I'd collect a line of PT diecast in the $30-$40 range. I mean a $20 model is OK if you don't care about any kind of nice detail at all and all the parts are molded into a blob. The Jada and Maisto stuff is decent detail for the money. The Pro-Rodz are nice and I have a couple but too much chrome and bling for me. The proportions are pretty good. The Jada stuff is just too dubbed out for me.
With the direction of the car market going towards new muscle cars I think there's gonna be a huge market for some serious collectible Muscle that makes sense. I like seeing the LS2 engines and performance suspension and brakes but then you look in the interior and there's over 20 speakers, amp, chrome and anodized roll bars - YUCK. The Hot Wheels stuff - yawn. Now that I'm not a Mattel employee I can say this but Mattel has always been the late guy to the party and misses the mark totally. They are so afraid of jumping on something that's new and hot that they wait until everybody else is doing it and creating a market THEN they jump on it - too late. I was showing presentation boards for Pro-Touring 4 years ago - now they are finally doing it??? Look at their PT diecast too - c'mon where's the staggered offset wheels? They look so sedated.
Sorry for the rant there but there's sooo much of this stuff on the market that it's all looking the same. Somebody needs to step up and make a quality well thought out lower end PT Diecast for 30-40 bucks. Something with Auto Art quality possibly.
If you did the Mule, Big Red, the 50/50 Camaro (I have to promote that you guys know this!) and the Bob Johnson Cuda that'd be hot.

Just my 2 cents
John