Why do they...?

[Pashina12]

Why do they make packages like this? I mean in the sense of putting cars from the 60s and modern ones together in one pack? If you're modelling the sixties, half the pack is of no use to you; if you're doing something modern, the old police car isn't gonna be very useful for you...

[kvp]

Imho it's a themed collection, not a period correct diorama set. Also good for the transition era. The old patrol car is the 1965-1971 design, so they were still in use when the modern cars arrived. This means it's usable roughly between 1965 and late 1990s. All four are Nissan police cars. (two unmarked and two normal)

[Suica]

There are people who only collect the cars/trucks. For them such a set probably makes more sense.

Also why not get creative? If you're modelling modern times you could replicate a car meet. Putting classic (Police-) cars would work well there. Or put it into a carport behind the Police station. Pretty sure it's not uncommon in Japan either to preserve historic equipment.

When visiting Japan I also noticed quite a number of classic cars on the streets.

[Pashina12]

Fair point re the use of the old cars in a modern setting as preserved heritage cars... now that you've mentioned it I recall that several of the municipal PDs around here have some preserved old cars from the 1930s-1950s.

 

The idea of themed collections for those who collect only the cars/trucks never occurred to me. Which, okay, fair... but then: are these cars available individually? If so, cool... if not, then once again I'd be back to buying a pack of which two cars are useless to me. I mean okay ￥1800 isn't really a major sum, but still...

 

On that note is collecting just these N scale cars and trucks really that common?

[JR 500系]

I guess it's also part of marketing.... Having 2 in each set makes the set more likely to sell, instead of one over the other ~

[bill937ca]

Actually the Toyota Comfort is an update of a 1970s Toyota Carina / Ceilica Camry which has remained in production for taxi cab and police car use in Japan , Hong Kong and Singapore. Only recently has the Toyota Comfort been discontinued after production since 1995.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Comfort

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Carina#Celica_Camry

[Suica]

3 hours ago, Pashina12 said:

On that note is collecting just these N scale cars and trucks really that common?

I know that there are people who collect HO scale cars. N scale cars used to be pretty boring / ugly due to the low level of detail. But Tomytec really stepped it up. So yeah, I can imagine that there are actually people like that.

[cteno4]

The tomytec vehicle line was started primarily as a collection series, not a model train accessory, but the secondary model train market has grown a lot over the years for them and they appear to have saturated the collection market. They really backed off on the larger collection series a number of years ago and rereleased these smaller sets that either appear to be collection oriented or just functionally oriented for the train needs. Too bad more of the larger old collections are not rereleased, variety is pretty slim these days.

 

jeff

[Densha]

10 hours ago, JR 500系 said:

I guess it's also part of marketing.... Having 2 in each set makes the set more likely to sell, instead of one over the other ~

This. I'm sure they're sold like this mainly because of marketing reasons.

 

I'm sure that when you're looking for older cars, that there will always be people that are looking for newer types. Reselling the ones you don't care about is always an option.

[JR 500系]

3 hours ago, Densha said:

This. I'm sure they're sold like this mainly because of marketing reasons.

 

I'm sure that when you're looking for older cars, that there will always be people that are looking for newer types. Reselling the ones you don't care about is always an option.

 

Super agreed ~

 

Though I do find it harder to find people who are into Showa era and requires those Showa era vehicles... Likewise for buses, I do have a lot of Showa buses that I don't really have much love for, but for the sake of pure collection purposes (that's just me) I think I will keep them... Though I do have duplicate Showa buses that didn't have a place to go... I can have one or two as display models on the layout, but the rest....

 

Perhaps that is why in the newer car sets, there are 3 modern and only 1 Showa era?

[Pashina12]

At least modellers of modern railways *can* put a few old cars out.

 

Anyways if some of those duplicate busses you have include old JNR Bus (BD34, BU04, BU15P, RE100) or Kokusai Kogyo (BU04, BU15P), I'm interested...

[cteno4]

when the tomytec large vehicle collections started over a decade ago a bunch of us on jrforum looked into getting a swapping network together to try and help spread out extras where they were most wanted. but it turned out to be way too expensive to do international shipping for this and trying to set up a more complex swap network (ie where you do 3 and 4 way trades) was just too much work.

 

Luckily we have a dozen or so here in the club so we could do a lot of swapping and selling of extras between us. now we split orders of collections as they have gotten pretty expensive and that help.

 

jeff

[Pashina12]

Yeah I was just looking on ebay at some of the busses (none that I need), and the shipping turns out more expensive than the bus itself...

[nah00]

With sets like this I tend to put the older cars in a more rural setting and the more contemporary ones in an urban (well, suburban on my layout) area. Also this is another thing that falls under the 3 or 4 foot rule - most people standing 3 feet away from it will only see a car. 

 

I just worry people will see that the tractor-trailer/large truck ratio to cars on mine is kind of skewed...

[Pashina12]

That's a good idea. I was thinking along the same lines - to have the actual village scenes have things like old Subaru 360s, Toyopets and Bluebirds, and limit the shiny new Glorias and Coronas to the highway scenes. My issue here of course is that 'contemporary' means like 1967-1968...

[Kiha66]

I've gotten a few showa era vehicles for my layout, and while some of the previous runs can be found buyee for cheap, the shipping adds up really fast!  I really like the looks of the bonnet bus though.