What unlikely releases do you want?

January 21

15 hours ago, disturbman said:

Afaik, the MA E10 is to scale. Only problem, it commands a rather hefty price on the second hand market.

There's one currently on Zenplus right now for ¥29,326 ($362.43NZD). That very definitely confirms your statement!

4 hours ago, Kamome said:

Kato’s 9600 hasn’t been produced since 2002 so crying out for release. Not owning one, I couldn’t say if tooling needed updating but seemed a solid model.

Having looked at both Toyoyasu's informative website and my conveniently-to-hand Kato catalogs, the 9600 was last available between 2009 and 2013. This was a 1:144 scale model though which looked pretty good for what it was, but might need some subtle reworking to get it down to the approximately 1:150 scale Kato prefers to use today, and update some of the details in the process. That would also be a good opportunity to design a version with the early production "S" running board ahead of the cab which no manufacturer has ever attempted - for either the 8620 or 9600 classes.

According to Japanese Wikipedia, the "S" shape cab (in my photo on the left) was only applied to the first eighteen 9600s and twenty-four 8620s before they switched to the classic 'Otoji' shape (to use the Japanese Wiki term, that could just be a really whacky translation though!) with the running board square to the cab front before dropping down and curving at the leading edge, as shown in my photo on the right. Presumably this made them easier to build, though to my eye it's not as aesthetically pleasing. It would be great to see Kato take the challenge on and attempt it!

Alastair

April 21

It shouldn't be unlikely at all. The Toyota JPN Taxi is now not just in Tokyo but all over the country from Sapporo to Nagasaki. Reportedly 60% of taxis are now the JPN Taxi. For comparison the JPN taxi is smaller and cheaper than the traditional London taxi.

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

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/トヨタ・ジャパンタクシー