A heavy two days. Kyosho has cut new tooling for a licensed Initial D set in 1:64 with working lights, ACME has one of drag racing’s most famous exhibition cars on the shelf in a run of 240, and Spark, Matrix and Pop Race have between them announced better than forty new references. Reference numbers, prices and delivery windows are given where the manufacturers stated them, and flagged where they did not.
Kyosho: Initial D in 1:64, with the lights working
New tooling, pre-orders open, four references in Kyosho’s own 1:64 diecast line:
- 07133LA — Toyota Sprinter Trueno (AE86), with LED
- 07133LB — Mazda RX-7 (FD3S), with LED
- 07133LC — Mazda Savanna RX-7 (FC3S), with LED
- 07133LD — Subaru Impreza WRX STI, with LED
No prices published. Kyosho points buyers at its distributor list rather than selling direct.
Two things make this worth more than a line in a list. The first is the tooling: these are new moulds, not a livery pass over something Kyosho already had, and a manufacturer only cuts fresh 1:64 tooling when it expects volume. The second is the lights. Working LEDs in a body 60-odd millimetres long means finding room for the electronics, the switch and the battery inside a shell that is mostly wheel arch, and it is the sort of thing that either comes off beautifully or looks like a torch. Kyosho has the engineering history to make the optimistic reading reasonable.
The licence is the commercial logic. Initial D put the AE86 Trueno, the FC and FD RX-7s and the WRX in front of an audience that is now in its thirties and forties with money to spend, and the four cars chosen here are the four that audience would name. The post drew several hundred reactions inside a day, which for a 1:64 announcement is a lot.
ACME: the Hemi Under Glass Cuda, 240 pieces, in stock
A1806138SS — the 1:18 1966 Plymouth Hemi Under Glass Cuda in Southern Speed colours. MSRP $144.95, production 240 pieces, and ACME says it is in stock and shipping rather than taking reservations.
Hemi Under Glass is the wheelstander — a Barracuda with the 426 Hemi moved behind the driver, under the rear glass, driving the rear wheels through a reversed axle. It first ran in 1965 and spent the best part of four decades on the exhibition circuit doing quarter miles on its back wheels. It is one of the few drag cars that people outside drag racing can name. Southern Speed is the sponsorship it carried in the mid-sixties.
Two hundred and forty is a tight run for a car with that recognition, and the model is already in the warehouse rather than months out. That is a short window.
1:18
AUTOart: the Toyota 2000GT, four ways
- 79546 — Toyota 2000GT 1967, white
- 79547 — red
- 79548 — silver
- 79549 — gold
Only 351 of the real cars were built, and the shape has aged better than almost anything else from 1967 — which is presumably why the 2000GT has turned up twice from two makers inside a week.
Sun Star: a Lotus 49C for Graham Hill
18223 — the Lotus 49C, car number 1, Graham Hill, Monaco Grand Prix 1970, limited to 999 pieces. Sun Star has posted a walkaround video.
Sun Star in Formula One is not where most collectors expect to find the company — the name means classic American saloons and rally cars to most people — but the 49 line has been running quietly for a while and the standard has been high. Hill won Monaco five times, which is the association the model is trading on.
Sun Star: the Mazda 3 Sport
- SS-5891 — Mazda 3 Sport, Sonic Blue, MSRP $149.95, first quarter of 2027
- SS-5892 — Glacier Silver Metallic, same price and date
- SS-5893 — Violet Gray Metallic, same price and date
No model year given. An ordinary hatchback at 1:18 is an unfashionable thing to tool and a welcome one — the scale is dominated by supercars and muscle, and cars people actually drove are thin on the ground.
Cult: the Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph
CML199-1, CML199-2 and CML199-3 — the 1998 Silver Seraph in three colours, quoted for the fourth quarter of 2026. No consumer price published.
A characteristically Cult choice. The Seraph was the last Rolls-Royce built at Crewe under Vickers, the first with BMW power, and it lasted four years before Goodwood and the Phantom replaced everything. Around fifteen hundred were made. It is exactly the sort of car that falls through the gap between the Silver Spirit and the modern era.
1:43
Spark takes on the Dakar Raptors
The whole M-Sport Ford team from the 2025 Dakar, four cars:
- S6009 — Raptor T1+ No.225, Carlos Sainz and Lucas Cruz
- S6004 — No.226, Mattias Ekström and Emil Bergkvist, third overall
- S6008 — No.227, Nani Roma and Alex Haro
- S6005 — No.228, Mitchell Guthrie and Kellon Walch, fifth
Cross-country rally is badly served in scale relative to how much of it there is, and a full four-car team from one Dakar is the kind of thing that only gets done when someone at the manufacturer cares. Doing the entry rather than the winner is the same instinct that produced LookSmart’s Spa grid last week.
Spark: the rest of it
Twenty-four new references in all. The historic end is the strongest:
- S2944 — Jaguar C-Type No.17, second at Le Mans 1953, Stirling Moss and Peter Walker
- S9425 — Ford Grid S2, C.A.M. Racing No.25, Le Mans 1984
- SJ165 — Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34), Calsonic Impul No.12, JGTC GT500 1999, Hoshino and Kageyama
- S5795, S5796 and S5798 — three Arrows A6 from 1983, Boutsen at the Dutch and European Grands Prix and Surer in the Netherlands
The modern end runs to Super GT 2025 (43SGT25011, the Team Gainer Nissan Z; 43SGT25052, the Green Brave GR Supra; and 64SGT25022, the R’QS Mercedes-AMG GT3 in 1:64), two Porsche 992 GT3 R customer cars (AS084 from Bathurst, SJ184 from Suzuka), and a run of Formula One — S9636 and S9669 for Verstappen’s Monza and Las Vegas wins in 2025, S9683 for Sainz’s Qatar podium, S9377 for Bearman’s 2026 Haas in China, and four 1:64 cars in Y424, Y430, Y431 and Y435. A Bell helmet, 5HF221, covers Bearman at Silverstone.
An Arrows A6 is not a car anyone tools for the money. Neither is a Grid S2. Whoever is choosing subjects at Spark this season is choosing well.
Matrix: ten, and two of them are Peter Gregg’s
All quoted for the fourth quarter of 2026, no consumer prices published:
- MXR41607-021 — Porsche 911 No.59, class winner, four hours of Sebring 1967, Peter Gregg and Sam Posey
- MXR41607-022 — Porsche 911 No.59, class winner, Bridgehampton 1967, Peter Gregg
- MX40108-191, -192 and -193 — Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato 1962, three colours
- MX40102-241, -242 and -243 — Alfa Romeo 1900C Coupe Pininfarina 1952, three colours
- MX41001-291 and -292 — Jaguar XJ-C Avon Stevens Cabriolet 1974, two colours
The Avon Stevens XJ-C is the deep cut — a coachbuilt convertible conversion of the Jaguar coupe, of which very few were made and almost none have ever been modelled. The Gregg Porsches are early Brumos-era cars, before the numbers and the colours everyone recognises.
1:64
Pop Race: eight, and an RWB AE86
All for the fourth quarter of 2026:
- PRT010 — Toyota Sprinter Trueno (AE86) RWB 1985
- PRT009 — Mazda 787B, test version, 1991
- PR640537 — Mazda RX-7 (FD3S) LB-Works Super Silhouette in 787B colours, No.55, Tokyo Auto Salon 2006
- PR640553 — Honda Civic EF9, PIAA No.9, Japan 1991
- PR640338 — Toyota GR86 Pandem 2022
- PR640542 and PRE038 — BMW M3 (E30) Pandem 1989
- PRE039 — Nissan Skyline GT-R (R32) Pandem 1992
Rauh-Welt on an AE86 is the odd one. RWB is a Porsche house — that is the whole identity — and Akira Nakai putting his hands on a Trueno is the sort of thing that gets argued about. Pop Race modelling it before most people have seen the real car is quick work.
Quick hits
- Mini GT is teasing something from film history — a pre-production sample pulled off the shelf in its own R&D library, no reference number, no name. Given the company announced two Bond cars last week, the guessing has already started.
- Nothing new from BBR, KK-Scale, GLM or Stamp since the weekend.
- Prices here are manufacturer MSRP where ACME published them. Where the source is a trade listing, no consumer price is given.
Seen something we missed, or have a sample in hand? Bring it to the forums at diecast.org/community — our members regularly surface releases before they reach the news pages.
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