Spark 1:43's

[chunterer]

Seems to me that this firm is churning out an awful lot of new releases. Have noticed quite a few F1 cars old and new like Virgin, Lotus, HRT, Sauber from last year, 80's Renault RE's of various vintage, BRM's, Can-Am cars even an Alpina B7 6 series.

The latter's of interest to me because it wouldn't take much for them to do race versions of the 635 from that base model. Hopefully some different versions to the Schnitzer examples that Minichamps have done?

Spark cars seem more expensive than Minichamps but not sure the quality is as good?

What do people think?

[BertMk2]

I've got a few Spark models (some WTCC BMW's and Alfa's) and the quality isn't bad - it's around the Minichamps sort of area although maybe not quite as good. The newer Audi DTM cars are made by Sprak in 1:43 so I'm looking at getting some - but as you say price is an issue, I don't think they're worth the extra over Minichamps (although some of the newer Minichamps models are even more expensive to be fair).

[Alfa Fan]

Spark's newest models are better than Minichamps. Some of the older stuff isn't as good, but anything released 2008/9ish onwards is great. Their modern F1 cars are vastly superior to Minichamps efforts, worth the extra money IMO.

From the sounds of your post you'd be looking at new releases, so at least in my experience, you won't find any problems there!

[iucrmh]

I would say that in general Spark is superior in quality to Minichamps. They are
resin models rather than diecast and are pretty much mass-produced hand-builts.
Although mass-produced in this case can mean as few as 750-1000 or each
model. They produce many niche models that someone like Minichamps
can't and wouldn't touch. To get a return from a diecast master you need to
produce many more models than in the case of resin models.

If you are interested in racing models (like me, a few hundred Le Mans cars)
just look at details such as rear wing supports - Spark use photo-etch whereas
in general diescast manufacturers don't, so that their wing supports are
almost like tree trunks by comparison. Minichamps are making some
resin models now, e.g. some Nurburgring 24 hour cars.

Cheers,
Mike