If you look to the right of the page, you'll see M2 on my top five of the index. I LOVE M2 MACHINES. For years, I wished for Japanese cars from M2. For years.
After the success of Jun Imai's work with Hot Wheels, then Ryu Asada, even brands that showed very little love for JDM before(GreenLight), or none at all(M2) are now trying to get into the game.
When GreenLight started getting into JDM with Nissan GT-Rs, we knew what we were in for. Hit & miss design, same thing with quality control. They were also gonna whore the thing to death with whatever licensing they could get their hands on. I love GreenLight, but this is the perception of the brand to many collectors these days.
M2 is a different story. Here's a company, outside of few Volkswagens, focused on classic American cars. Stylish castings, very attractive selection of cars..... but all old & (almost)all American. I fantasized M2 making Japanese cars for purely selfish reasons of 1) I like Japanese cars. 2) I adore M2 diecast cars.
The day finally arrived, but it wasn't all great.
According to M2, they are "starting out" with the Nissans, and not that I was expecting Isuzu Bellett right off the bat, but I thought the Bluebird(510)/Fairlady Z/Hakosuka thing was way too easy. Straight out of Mattel's playbook. Maybe they couldn't afford to take too many chances, maybe they just don't know much about vintage Japanese cars, or little bit of both. Who knows.
I also thought throwing kanji in "Auto-日本", or "chase", "super" in katakana on the cars themselves were really lame. "Custom" on the base, also in katakana's something I might have done. Back when I was a little Japanese boy. Just seems childish to me. Sorry for the gripes, just sharing my feelings on it. Moving on.
Without opening the case, I could tell that casting size is much smaller than with standard M2 cars(they are usually little big for 1/64 scale). While the front looked bit rough, neatly detailed side of the car reminded me of Tomica Limited Vintage. TLV!? What!?
See, I'm not crazy. Looks pretty good, right?
Again, the front's little rough. Keep in mind, while I paid $14 & change on eBay(shipped), these things sell in stores for $6. Six bucks!!
Rear looks fine. So fine.
Hood closes nicely. Not much gap.
Paint looks scraped off on the headlights. They probably had to battle the price-point issue, but I really would have liked resin/plastic headlights on here, even if the price increased by another buck or so. If they could keep up with the neatly detailed quality, resin on both headlights & taillights, I think they could pull of $7, maybe $8 for these cars. M2 did a heck of job here. *tear*
I also have a preorder on six car set. Looking forward to more JDMs from M2!
