Today we’ll take a look at the 1990s, a wonderfully changing decade for cars, and this collection of scale models captures that variety perfectly. We’ll briefly cover everything from anonymous American sedans and sporty coupes to German luxury cars, practical Japanese mid-sizers, a few international oddities, and yes — even a Volvo. The kind of mixed automotive landscape that once filled suburban driveways and dealership lots, in a car market that was becoming ever more globally integrated.
Pontiac really nailed the look here with the 1987-1996 Grand Prix. Definitely a modern coupe, definitely distinctive, no weird details to make buyers go -huh?’ and turn away, the lower door applique is well integrated with the overall shape – but was it what buyers wanted? Teal, because nineties.
I’ve put this down as ‘90s because I don’t know the exact year. Is there a way to tell? It doesn’t much matter to me, because I only have one of this 1993-1997 generation. I didn’t get the later one with the huge nostrils. Purple because such outrageous looks demand an outrageous colour.
When they came out with the ZR1, I just had to get one in scale. Finally, the Vette got an engine as exotic as the looks. Designed by Lotus, no less! What a heritage. Four cams, 32 valves, all the good stuff. Had GM finally turned the corner, with technology to match best practice? Uh, no. By 1996 the DOHC mill was out to pasture, and we’re back with valves run by pushrods, folks.
It’s hard to think what to say about this 1994-1998 Accord wagon. A classic Honda design from their low-cowl period – when a Honda was distinctively proportioned, sensibly designed, cleanly shaped. An Aoshima kit; I can’t think of another company that would have done it. Metallic red to give it a bit of extra spice.
BMW E36. Top engine in one that’s not an M3? Initially that was the 325i, and a 328 came later. But the 328 was tuned for torque. The boys at Alpina went one better, adding almost 50hp, and giving the body and suspension a bit of a makeover to go with it. Revell’s German branch decided the B6 2.8 needed a model kit. I agreed.
The 1987-1996 Chevrolet Beretta could have been a good-looking car, but… Ever looked at the shape of the rear windshield of one of these? Looking at some of those curves down near the bottom corners gives me a headache. What must it be like to look through? What must it have been like to replace one? It’s like GM decreed there had to be a feature to make you go ‘Huh?’ in every car to get the Mark of Whatchamacallit. This metallic black GTZ has the ‘Quad Four’. C’mon GM, what is this, the 1950s? Engines don’t need cutesy names.
This M5 Fujimi kit was relatively simple, with no engine detail, but the body is one of my favourite BMW sedans. In one of those little ‘coincidences’, it’s kit number RS-34; how appropriate. Dark metallic grey because it looked suitably BMW-ish for keeping a low profile.
The 1989-1997 Mercury Cougar is one of those designs that shouldn’t work yet somehow does. The equivalent Thunderbird is amazing; I think it’s the low cowl height and curved edges that enables the blocky roof to ‘fit’ this so well. Pink? Well, it’s a pretty rough paint job that really needs stripping and redoing.
Ah Mitsubishi. They were really on top of their game for a while there. Not content with a good two-litre family car, they decided to make a Group A rally car out of the Galant. It grew a turbo, and 4WD. 5000 sales minimum, said the authorities?
No problem, said Mitsubishi. The Asia-Pacific region easily took that. It had some success, but all the good bits were later transplanted into the Lancer; now that was a success!
Take the C4 ZR-1 Vette and crank it to 11. That’s the Guldstand GS90. Dick Guldstrand handled the engineering side of things, with Bilstein coilovers to suspend it, and 475hp from the LT5 V8. Steve Winter styled the new body with fibreglass and carbon-fibre panels, taking away the angular look no longer in fashion. It was much easier for AMT; they tooled a new body and interior for their existing ZR-1 kit. Same assembly challenges though. I left off the white stripes; I’d had enough by the time I got this far!
The only one of the 1994-1998 Mustangs I’ve built. I wasn’t impressed by the facelift/reskin later in this generation. Some cars almost tell me what colour they want to be. This one seemed to say “teal, please.”
Honda again! I was rather taken by the design of these 1994-1998 Odysseys (sort of a van but not a van), before everybody and his dog started making similar things. Sort of a proto-crossover? A not-quite-minivan? This one was the victim of a paint experiment, using colour-changing paint – which looked silly with the stock wheels, so one thing led to another, and…
Let’s briefly fast forward to 2008-2013. Just love this generation of Odyssey. This was released after US Honda went its own way in pursuit of the ideal minivan. For the rest of the world, Honda brought out this. Considerably lower (to aid in parking garages, Honda said), and sleeker, Honda almost seemed to be making an Accord wagon here – but they already had one of those. But Evening Orchid wasn’t on the colour chart – shame. It’s on mine.
These need no introduction. I didn’t remember building both of these. Initially the Caprice was released as a snap-together kit (no glue needed, but it helps) in police or taxi form. It instantly set a new standard for snap kits in terms of number of parts and accuracy – snap kits previously being smaller cheaper and less detailed. Revell later revised the kit into an Impala SS, which held little interest to me.
This is one of those ‘do I include it or not?’ cars. Says Dodge on the outside, but pure Mitsubishi underneath. So is it American? Or Japanese? Whatever, here it is as the 1991-1994 Stealth.
And here’s a late entry from the Eighties. I just found it a week ago.
I always thought of these as ‘Volvo does an A-car’. The styling is so unmistakably Volvo, yet also so very American. I hated these when they first came out, but have grown to respect what Volvo was doing here. Riding in a friend’s 940 helped. People-first practicality. Huge glass area. Excellent visibility. Found and photographed after twenty years packed away in a dark box. It hasn’t changed; I have.
Your builds are excellent for the most part, as are your choices of what to model. I didn’t know there was still such a variety in the model world. All I see in my local store are Sixties muscle cars with fewer personalization options than the original issue.
Difficult to tell from the photos, but it looks as though your paint jobs could stand a bit more buffing. They look semi-gloss rather than smooth. The difficulty is that if polished before assembly then the gloss doesn’t always match and they appear to have been subjected to the wrath of an unskilled rotary buffer. If you wait until they’re assembled, then you risk knocking off mirrors and removing painted black trim. Have you ever experimented with this?
Thanks for commenting, Don. If you look around online it’s amazing the variety you can find – I’m talking about actual store sites here. I’m a half-hour’s drive from the nearest hobby shop (and I can’t drive any more), and while they have a decent range of car kits, I often leave with nothing more than paint and supplies. I would buy about half of my kits online. Most of the kits I showed here are older, discontinued ones. Some periodically return to the catalog.
I agree with you on my paint jobs. I am at heart a rather impatient person, and cannot wait to get on to the next project. I find my best paint jobs are obtained with some of the Japanese hobby paints. Duplicolor tends to be erratic in quality, and needs a diffferent technique; same with the American Testors paints (hard to come by in my country anyway). No airbrush? No (shock, horror #1). I have never learned to use one, and I have trouble learning any new skills these days. That being said, I do not often buff and polish my models (shock, horror #2) unless the paint job obviously needs help. Like, I wouldn’t buff Tamiya. I err on the side of caution, rather then risk polishing through to plastic. Too cautious? Probably. I wouldn’t use a rotary buffer; I’d do it by hand, and risk an uneven shine. There’s too much risk of flicking an innocent mirror off into some unexplored dimension. Been there, done that.
I spent nearly every penny I had in my pre-teen years on model kits…cars and airplanes. I love these articles because they often bring back memories of long-forgotten builds of mine. My build and paint efforts at the time were much less impressive than yours, though!
The Volvo at the end…I feel like that was a Testors kit? I vaguely recall building a similar one as a kid, even though Volvos at the time held about the same appeal to me as homework and dentist appointments! Testors usually produced a solid product.
Testors is a funny company. They often rebox another company’s product for North American distribution. All fine and legal, I’m sure. But seeing as I’m in Australia, I got the original. In this case, it’s an Italeri from (you guessed it) Italy.
I totally get those memories, particularly the ”spending every penny’ bit. I used to walk five miles to the shop and five miles back to save the tram/bus fare, so I’d have more to spend – did that well into my twenties. As with any skill, it takes time and practice. Though there are plenty of adult modellers (like Don above), for many kids it’s a thing they grow out of. I never did.
Your building skills are definitely apparent in all your CC submissions. I keep telling myself I’ll get back into kit building someday…perhaps retirement. Either way I’ll need a bigger workshop to avoid incurring the wrath of Mrs. MGC76
We had Italeri kits here in the US as well. Testors kits were also occasionally co-branded as Italeri products on their boxes. It was an odd setup. In terms of fit and finish, my favorites as a kid in the 1980s were Tamiya. Those were rare treats, as their high cost and relatively limited availability at my local hobby shop precluded me from indulging too often.
Thanks again for sharing your pics!
Retirement is good, I can heartily recommend it. Unfortunately with retirement comes old age – which may bring with it the unforeseen diminution of certain physical abilities. Things like eyesight, ability to pick up and manipulate small parts, etc. Don’t wait for retirement!
Testors products were uncommon in my country, but Tamiya were and are very well distributed. Pricing can be another matter, but occasionally there is a pleasant surprise.
In fairness to the pink paint on the Cougar, the factory electric currant red on the 1:1 tends to fade to that exact color with age! I agree with everything, as a design it’s an acquired taste, but the roofline actually highlights the subtle wedge shape of the lower body in a way that’s kind of lost with the Tbird’s more universally palatable profile. It’s a very sleek car where other 80s formal coupes just look boxy.
Of note with the model it’s a 1992 XR7, which actually was a legitimate sport/handling package in the 83-92 years, at times being a mirror of the TbirdTurbo/Supercoupe packages. 1992 was the last year before all Cougars were all badged as XR7s until 1997 and the 92 has several unique features from the 89-91s that were a bit more Supercoupe adjacent, the seats was made plusher with glossy burled walnut woodgrain (similar to that found in standard 1993 Cougars) but retained the fold down rear seat option that heretofore was only ever coupled to the supercoupe style front seats. 92 also had those 1 year only 16×7 turbine style wheels replacing the 7 spoke wheels of the same size on the 89-91 XR7s(and revived for 96-97s with the sport package), and given the low production of XR7s in 1992 those wheels are extremely rare! Funny enough though with Revell’s 3-1 kit that seemed to be the most common Cougar kit I’d found in stores they all come with those rare wheels in scale!
Ha – I should have known I’d hear from you, Matt! And of course you can date the XR7, no surprise there either. Thanks for that; I mean it. For some of these cars (like the Hondas) the year didn’t matter, for others I just couldn’t remember, and didn’t know enough about to pick up on the differences. Like those rare wheels.
I remember seeing Cougar kits with the other style wheels, but I preferred these. I think ’92 may have been the last year of Cougar Revell did; so when they looked for tooling to reissue, up came the ’92 with the rare wheels. There may have been perhaps a handful of people at Revell who appreciated the wheels’ rarity and decided to slip them in, but more likely they re-ran the tool as last used.
Haha yep! That’s probably the case, as the 3 in 1 kit with a lowrider on the box is seen in stores like Hobby Lobby as recent as 5-6 years ago(I actually bought one I never did anything with during the pandemic). XR7s also had unique tapered shaped side mouldings in 91-92, which Revell would have had to change for a 93 or 94 or 96 update to it so they probably threw in the towel then and there.
Personally I do prefer the 7 spoke wheels, but 92s are by far the rarest and most unique of the MN12 generation of Cougars it’s really cool seeing a complete model of one as finding the model of the actual car isn’t easy, even with google! If I ever get around to building my kit I’m going to kit bash it to resemble my 94 which makes me feel kind of guilty not using those unique provided pieces!
Again, these are great, Peter. Your comments regarding the MN-12 Cougar had me also reflecting that they looked good to me, too. I was glad the upswept rear quarter glass had gotten the heave-ho with this redesign. That inverted triangular pane of glass looked good on the quirky AMC Gremlin and was downright stunning on the Avanti, but on the previous Cougar, it looked awful with that flat rear glass. The rectangular pane of this generation suites the car’s overall look much better.
I did like the subtle styling differences between the Dodge Stealth and Mitsubishi 3000 GT. They still looked Japanese (which is fine), but they never struck me as being badge-engineered clones.
Thanks Joseph. On the Cougar, the window that made you think Gremlin made me think ‘British Ford Anglia 105E’ (the Harry Potter car). That always seemed to me to be a weird design choice for the Cougar, to bring back a 30-year-old design feature. It was certainly distinctive on the Cougar, but maybe too much of an acquired taste. Would it be too much to suggest it may have been polarising? I didn’t buy any of those ’89-’91 models.
Since writing this feature I’ve built a Mitsubishi 3000GT, and the Stealth is far from being a rebadge. While it may be mechanically pure Mitsubishi, and structurally the same under the skin, there are many outer panel differences. Unfortunately I can’t post a pic (I just tried), as doing that in a comment seems to trigger the bot filter…
It was, but that was to some extent by design. Jack Telnack, who led the development of the 1983 Thunderbird and Cougar, said that the formal roof was kind of a concession to senior management who were nervous about the more aerodynamic Thunderbird the Cougar was paired with. Their intended GM competition were still wedded to the formal roof — if you consider that the Thunderbird and Cougar were positioned roughly in between the early ’80s Buick Regal and the Riviera, you can see why Ford was uneasy about going a different direction. As long as they also had the formal roof Cougar, they didn’t have to be as panicky about it: It gave buyers a choice, and if worse came to worse, it would not have been too hard to contrive a formal roof Thunderbird.
Yes, I take your point, but in the early years of the MN12 Cougar, that formal roof was wedded with a decidedly informal avant-garde (or retro?) quarter-window treatment. I realise Ford’s approach here – offer the buyers a choice of roof styles, modern or classic GM style – but GM would never have done that quarter-window! It’s like Mercury was saying, ‘Okay, here’s the roofline you want, but you’ve got to take this window, so you don’t forget we’re not GM.’ 🙂 Then they normalised the window to the style shown here for ’92.
You mean this one, yes? The 1983–1988 Cougar is not an MN12 — that was the 1989 revamp, which was a quite different platform. (The earlier car was still a Fox-body underneath.) The MN12 Cougar had a more rectangular quarter window with rounded corners, and wasn’t quite as severe.
You’re right, Aaron (of course), that’s what comes from me not checking, and thinking I knew which Mercury was which. I did an image search and found the window I was thinking of was on the later Fox-bodies: I mistakenly thought that was an early MN-12 feature.
Peter you might be thinking of the 87-88s which much like the Tbird got a full sheetmetal revamp complete with flush composite headlamps and side glass and softer edges like the MN12 that effectively bridge the styling gap between platforms, but also even more exaggerated quarter windows.
I actually like these quite a bit, but the 104” wheelbase really started to show it’s awkwardness with this update (to me the 9” wheelbase stretch was the biggest styling improvement of the MN12 generation from these)
Matt to the rescue! Yep, that’s precisely the one I was thinking of. Oh well, I may be right on one point here – GM wouldn’t have done this!
And yes, it was about time Ford grew out of its weird short-wheebase/long-overhangs fixation. Not only did it look unwieldy, sometimes to the point of outright goofiness, but it must’ve been bad for interior space. Peugeot designers would have been laughing up their sleeves.
As good as that era of grand prixs looked, the 97-03 was even better, much better. One of the best looking sedans of the last 40 or so years.