RoG quality, average in car's models, is excellent in other fields....

I bought a bunch of airplanes kits from a friend, 10+ items, some old, some seems new stuff. I'm not expert in aicraft "modern" kits since last one was bought 15+ years ago.

Well: one of the kits I bought for very cheap is an amazing, outstanding, superb... really a fantastic stuff: the Eurofighter Typhoon. Not to meant the aircraft design, off topic, the mold's quality is something we never see in our car modelling's field: so crispy, detailed, faults free.

So?

Why?

Why guys? Why RoG give us just "average" stuff(or less to me)? I got a new R8 and I must admit that the body shell is almost good to be at Tamy standard, but all the other stuff... mechs and interior is just at the "Scaglietti" level, just to be gentle. They have the skills to do the best model in your dreams, for cheap, and they do it... ok not crappy but also not so good.

Marketing issues? Numbers? May be they're ready to invest more in study/editing/molds since they know that aircraft guys are much more...

If anyone is interested I'll show details about the plane's mold in the aircraft mod. sect.

Well Gio it depends. Revell doesn't necessarily design all it's molds. Often they buy them from other manufacturers so you end up with Revell kits of very different standards....
See for example the Sauber C9 and Porsche 962C that are old Hasegawa kits.
The new cars...sadly... seem to be made by themselves :-)

Yeah, that 'Revell' Porsche 944 is a terrific kit! :grinyes:

Marketing issues?

You've said it.


can't be otherwise, the hobby has got an image problem, but that's a whole discussion on its own.

And, their problem might be that they don't employ me.



oli :)

Well Gio it depends. Revell doesn't necessarily design all it's molds. Often they buy them from other manufacturers so you end up with Revell kits of very different standards....
See for example the Sauber C9 and Porsche 962C that are old Hasegawa kits.
The new cars...sadly... seem to be made by themselves :-) Actually the Typhoon is their own mold. So is their F-15E, which is considered the best in the field.

But then there are competitions in the aircraft or armour market, while us car modellers are just desperate for new car kits.

I think it has to do with the product developers and the master/die makers. They are clearly a different bunch working on the aircraft and armour than the automobiles. The new Revell DE aircraft easily go toe to toe with the Japanese product. In the case of the new 1/72 Lancaster they totally killed the year old Hasegawa tool; it's twice the kit at half the price!

The quality of the kit may be a trade off to the number of parts present. I build 1/72 aircraft and have noticed they tend to have fewer parts than car models but are of better quality tooling-wise. Yet the cost of the aircraft are about the same or higher than the car models. This may contribute to the difference in quality among cars and aircraft, besides those that we already know such as market demand.

Here's another possible reason-

Kits of automotive subjects are more expensive to create now than they're ever been, due to the demands of licensing fees from car manufacturers. Fees were almost negligible 10-20 years ago, but they are a very significant portion of the cost of producing car kits now- and kits of military and aircraft subjects simply haven't had to deal with these fees. So perhaps in the attempt to produce a kit for a price that would not prohibit sales, Revell has attempted to keep tooling prices down by reducing complication of molds for car kits.

That's also likely why Revell (and Tamiya) have been rereleasing older kits so much. Licensing still has to be paid, but at least the investment in new tooling doesn't have to be made.