North American automobile models

[64F]

Reviving a truly ancient topic in case anyone is currently searching for these and isn't aware of Rapido's forthcoming 1980-85 Chevrolet Impala/Caprice range in H0.  They look like beautiful little models (but are priced accordingly...).  Decent H0 North American cars always seem to be limited editions and I find that they sometimes sell out quickly, so I've pre-ordered mine.

 

It really surprises me how difficult it is to get H0 North American cars, given that railroad modelling is a sizeable hobby and that the USA in particular is so car-orientated.  You would think that there would be a decent market for them from model car collectors too.  The Germans are spoiled for choice with H0 cars and recently we do reasonably well in the UK thanks to Oxford (albeit certain eras are better covered than others), so its odd that North America is so poorly served.  The Oxford H0 cars are good value for money but most are a little early for my era, and perhaps exotic/sporty cars are over-represented compared to the bread and butter high-volume models that are more useful on a layout.

 

The same applies to H0 buses - Iconic Replicas do some rather nice ones but they are also quite expensive and not easy to get hold of in the UK. They seem to like doing limited runs of just 504 models, even for Greyhound and Trailways liveries that I would have expected to be particularly collectable.