Aoshima Kits - Any Good?

As a long-time fan of Hasegawa, Airfix, and Tamiya (by "long-time", I mean 22 years!), I'm now trying to venture out and try some of the other manufacturers...

... I am not really too excited about any of the Fujimi kits I've seen, or the Revell models I've seen at Walmart...

... but what about Aoshima? They have a lot of interesting kits - modded street cars, etc, that look like very cool models.

Does Aoshima make good quality kits? How accurate are they? My baseline / point of reference is the three manufacturers mentioned above.

Any kits you definitely recommend?

I'm more into German cars, but I do like a lot of the JDM cars out there. Not so much on the old Chevy's, etc.

Thanks for the help!

As with any manufacturer, some kits are definately better than others- so asking about the quality of all kits from a manufacturer can be pretty meaningless. "Is a good Aoshima kit better or worse than a mid level Tamiya kit?" is objectively unanswerable.

What kit do you want to know about?

The more specific your question is, the more useful the answers are likely to be.

Its hard to say, I feel that most Aoshima kits are fairly acurate not spot on but they make an impression on you. I always look at this way: Tamiya
Aoshima
Fujimi
Revell
AMT
Thats how i see Aoshima standing in the ranks of manufacturers. Most kits from aoshima all have some unique part that makes them really stand out, yes they do have lots of street cars and what not and some "not all" are well worth the buck. You should pick a aoshima kit, they usually have a few at Hobby Lobbies at a reasonable price so you could pick one up from there and see what you think for yourself.:licka:

What kit do you want to know about?
These are some kits I would like to know about, from Aoshima - any experience with any of these?

2000 HONDA ACCORD STATION WAGON 2.3 VTL

2000 HONDA ACCORD WAGON SiR CUSTOM

TOYOTA ARISTO JZS161 4dr. EXPLOSION CUSTOM

MAZDA RX-7 COUPE GT-C CONCEPT S-PACKAGE

TOYOTA TRUENO SPRINTER AE86 '83

HPI MAZDA FC3S RX-7 2005 D1GP

MAZDA NB8C ROADSTER AUTOEXE

NISSAN SILVIA S15 RIDGE VERTEX

JUN PRELUDE SI VTEC

Those are all ok kits. They fit better and are better molded than their Fujimi counterparts. They also have more accurate detail, most notably on the chassis and other places Fujimi figured hidden and not important. Beware kits with body kits and ground effects in them, they usually fit oddly at best, poorly at worst, and take some work to make look convincing. Aoshima didn't make shake-the-box kits until recently, long after Tamiya was doing it, but not too much before Fujimi caught on. Those are all worth the plastic their made out of, but will all take a little care to make well. Good luck, and don't forget to post progress!

I think Aoshima kits have sharp bodies and excellent decals. Their interiors are not 100%, i.e. they will use a road car interior for drift cars, but for road cars, the interiors are not too bad.

They do great tuner cars and their wheels are EXCELLENT!!, especially the 19"s

I would say that Aoshima are on par with Hasegawa.

I like 'em. :)

i built the nissan highrider v30 (green) it aint that bad, everything fit almost perfect but i have a problem the part that you glue to the inside of the wheel to glue on to the pin/axle was missing!