Like many young boys, I had a gigantic tub of Matchbox cars which I loved to dump all over the floor, completely ignorant my family’s need to maintain a clean house or keep the skin on the soles of their feet intact. In an effort to make them look more realistic, I placed the toys on top of the stove to give their tires flat spots. I was completely perplexed by my parents’ response; who wouldn’t want realistic toys?
Now that I’m a big boy, I can go shopping for toys all by myself and during a recent trip to the local antique mall, I came across these two minature Hondas–an ’84 CRX and an ’88 Prelude–on sale for a dollar each. I meant to mail them to a friend in Tijuana who sent me a 1/64 scale Renault R25, but might just like them too much to part with them.
You can just make out the rear wiper molded into the backlite on the Prelude, meaning it was modeled after the Japanese market version. With traffic moving through cities and suburbs more and more slowly, I wonder when a carmaker will be generous enough to install one on a popular notchback. I won’t hold my breath.
As you can see here, the CRX is also modeled after its Japanese market counterpart, with retractable “eyelids” which never made it over to the US (perhaps for the best).
We can see that, despite its opening doors, this miniature Prelude is less accurately realized than the CRX, which was made by ZEE Toys. Information about this toy online lists it as a 1/64th scale or a 1/60th scale toy, but it is slightly larger than the Prelude, marked 1/58th scale by Majorette, so something doesn’t add up.
In any case, these two tiny cars have reignited my interest in model cars. While researching them, I found this lovely 1/18th scale CR-X on eBay. If I can build a few model cars without getting getting glue and thumbprints on the windows, this will be my reward.
I saw a modified Galant sedan with a rear wiper the other day. Never seen one like that before. I wish more sedans had them.
Interesting that these toy cars still have right hand drive? Think they just use a standard template for those?
Tamiya also did nice 1/24 kits of the original CRX and thirdgen Civic hatch. Oddly, the CRX was RHD only and the Civic has both LHD and RHD dashboards and wipers.
Lots of JDM sedans have rear screen wipers must be a visibility fetish over there in their clogged cities, I’m liking these model car posts I had many model cars as a child but none survived or were kept though I do have one sitting around here John Bowe’s Caterpillar XR8 AU Falcon, strange as I cant abide AU Fords.
the 1/64th scale world is pretty interesting. there are a LOT of cars out there and the quality of the better ones is amazing. check out the premium Auto World cars.
I never liked the hot rod aspect of Hot Wheels, and Corgis were a little light in the metal. Matchbox were just right, realistic road models. Flat spot tires? Hehehe.
Cool! I knew right off the bat the Prelude was a Majorette by its wheels. One of my early CC posts was on Majorette models: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/miniature-curbside-classic-spotlight-on-majorette/
They were really well detailed and made in France, at least until the late ’90s. I think they’re made in China now, and no longer sold in the States. They also made a second-gen Tercel 4WD wagon, ’80s Caprice police car and a Peugeot 405 Mi16, but my favorite was the Volvo 760GLE!
Tamiya and Majorette seemed to enter the market here in oz after I had ‘grown up’. Didn’t stop me from buying the Esprit with the pop up lights.
I used to have those 2. found a dark blue recast of the CRX a few years ago.
I had both the CR-X the model (in red) and the CRX the real car (in blue). The car was stolen in ’91, but the model is around…somewhere.
It’s nice to see a toy CR-X that hasn’t been given the boy-racer treatment, lowered so much that it scrapes against the coffee table, and with one of those loud teeny-tiny fart-can mufflers that annoy the Hell out of the itty-bitty neighbors.
Nice finds. Until recently it seems Japanese cars in this scale have been less common.
That’s been my experience too.
I’ve never been a model collector, but I got this little Civic recently at a meet. I was looking for a 1st-gen Accord (since I own a “real” one) but they’re hard to find. I’m not sure what scale this is, but it’s just a little over 2 inches long. Hard to photograph!
One more.
Lovely, Mr. Green!
Thanks! I would also love to find a 3rd-gen Accord (with the pop-up headlghts). US-spec if possible. But I try not to look too much into collecting models, because I think it could easily get out of hand!