Some companies have been producing models for many years. In the early years, quality was not all that good. An examination of older productions from Anson, Ertl, Mira, Solido, Bburago, Maisto, Jouef, Revell, and Yat Ming show that what was accepted as normal was, by today's standards, mediocre. Even older Kyoshos are lacking in the qualities that more modern examples exhibit (e.g. Mercedes 300SL Gullwing).

Some of these companies are still releasing models based on the old molds. Some try to give them a new lease on life by issuing them in race versions (Bburago) or movie cars (Ertl, Solido), giving them special paint jobs (Maisto) or otherwise enhancing them to extend the payback on their investment. I am now giving these models a C rating (or, unfortunately, sometimes worse). It doesn't matter how you present them (e.g. Ertl's tying certain cars to the World Series winner of that year), if the original mold is poor quality there is a limit as to what you can get out of them.

Some of these companies are no longer in existence and their molds have been bought up by others. For example, Chronos are now released as Sun Stars; Solido bought Mira's molds but have themselves gone out of business. Bburago and Guiloy have gone out of business and their models have not showed up elsewhere. It would be possible and fairly economical to rework the engines and interiors (especially the dashboards) to improve the quality. I was hoping that Sun Star would do this with Chrono reissues because the basic Chrono models are quite good. (E.g. Triumph Spitfire.) However, they have not done so.

In the last 5 years, quality has improved considerably. Besides the high quality releases by Exoto, AUTOart, Precision 100, Highway 61, Kyosho, etc. the more mainstream companies such as Yat Ming and Maisto have been improving what they do. In addition, newcomers such as Sun Star, Signature and Ricko have entered the market with product that is superior to what we were experiencing just a short time ago. This has led to a general raising of quality, so that I now consider average to be a B. I have had to re-evaluate my ratings in view of these developments, and create the AA rating. This process has also resulted in some ratings being lowered.