First, an update on the site
Before today’s news, a word about what has been going on at diecast.org over the past month. A lot of it happened quietly in the background, and members who have not looked around in a while will find the place considerably changed.
The old forums are back
This is the big one. More than 1.2 million posts and replies from the original site have been restored and are back on the forums. The archive now runs to over 195,000 topics and 1,276,000 posts across all eight forums, with material going back to the club’s earliest years — thirty years of collector research, model photography, restoration threads and shop talk.
The restored posts are read only. That is deliberate: re-opening a million old threads for replies would hand spammers a million pages to work with. They are there for research and reference. If you find an old thread worth reviving, copy the part you want and start a fresh thread with it.
The Car List and Reviews
45,145 models and reviews are now catalogued by part number, brand, automaker, model, year, scale and colour, covering more than 100 brands, over 200 automakers and model years from 1886 to 2026 — current production and long out of production alike, and not only cars: trucks, tractors, construction plant and ships too, from 1:8 down to 1:1250.
Two things worth knowing about it. More than 2,400 member reviews that were lost in the 2021 move have been recovered from a backup and reattached to their models; they carry a gold REVIEW badge in the listings. And the awesome new search feature understands plain English — describe what you are after in ordinary words, in any order, and the closest matches come back ranked. “1970 pontiac gto blue 1:18” works. So does a bare part number.
And the rest
- Video Reviews — a new page collecting members’ video reviews, starting with John Kuvakas’s My Take, playable on the page rather than sending you off to another site.
- A rebuilt home page, with the forums, the news, the auctions, the Hall of Fame and membership all reachable from one screen.
- This news section, which is new since August and now runs most weekdays — manufacturer announcements with reference numbers, colours and delivery dates, checked against the makers’ own postings rather than reprinted from elsewhere.
- The Password Reset works great now. Get a new password if you need to. Log in and chat with the club members!
Now onto today’s news!
Spark is going to build the incredibly popular AO Racing “Bushi Rex”, the ancient samurai ancestor of Rexy, the Suzuka 1000km winner in four scales, and one of them is 1:8 — a size Spark has never worked in. BBR has announced the Maserati MCXtrema in four liveries, ACME has two Atoll Blue GTOs at 300 pieces each, Norev is doing a full-opening diecast Volvo 850 T-5R wagon, and GT Spirit has the Corvette ZR1X first image. Reference numbers and prices are given where the manufacturers published them.
Spark: the Bushi Rex Porsche in 1:64, 1:43, 1:18 and 1:8
Spark has confirmed it will replicate the number 8 Porsche 911 GT3 R that just won the 50th Suzuka 1000km on 13 September, and that the model will be offered in four scales — 1:64, 1:43, 1:18 and 1:8. Global pre-orders open shortly. Spark says it will be the winner’s version, so expect the finishing-line trim rather than a clean pre-race car. No reference numbers, edition sizes or prices yet.
The 1:8 is the headline. Spark’s catalogue is built on 1:43 and 1:18, and a 1:8 GT3 R from a maker at Spark’s price point would be the largest thing the company has attempted. Very few manufacturers work at that size at all, and those that do — Amalgam, GT Spirit, Pocher — sit at a completely different end of the market.
The car is worth the treatment. AO Racing ran with Absolute Racing in a new livery, Bushi Rex, a samurai version of the team’s Rexy character built for the Japanese round. Laurin Heinrich, Alessio Picariello and Julien Andlauer won by close to fifty seconds. It was AO Racing’s first outright GT victory and Porsche’s first overall win at the Suzuka 1000km since 1994 — a thirty-two year gap — in the fiftieth running of the race. Liveries like this one are why 1:8 exists.
1:18
BBR: the Maserati MCXtrema in four liveries
- P18246A — Maserati MCXtrema, Original livery
- P18246B — Maserati MCXtrema, Tech Beast livery
- P18246C — Maserati MCXtrema, Corse livery
- P18246D — Maserati MCXtrema, Speed Beast livery
All four are 1:18 and all four ship with a plexiglass display case. BBR’s own store lists them at 437.98 euros each.
The real car is a good subject and an almost untouched one. Maserati built 62 MCXtremas, all track only, all sold before most people had seen one, and the shape is genuinely strange in the way that only a car exempt from road regulations can be — the shark fin running the length of the engine cover into the rear wing is the detail that will make or break the model. Four liveries at launch is BBR being confident, and the Speed Beast and Tech Beast schemes are the ones doing the work.
ACME: two Atoll Blue 1970 Pontiac GTOs
- A1801231 — 1970 Pontiac GTO, Atoll Blue. MSRP $144.95, ETA fourth quarter 2026, roughly 300 pieces
- A1801231VT — the same car with a vinyl top. MSRP $144.95, ETA fourth quarter 2026, roughly 300 pieces
Both have matching blue interiors, the 455 engine, working suspension, a detailed dashboard, tilting front seats and removable hub caps.
1970 is the year the GTO got the split grille, the quad headlights and the twin hood scoops, and Atoll Blue is a properly period colour rather than a crowd-pleaser. What is unusual here is the restraint: ACME has resisted the Judge stripes and the Ram Air callouts and built a plain car twice over, once with the vinyl roof. Collectors have been asking for exactly that from this tooling for years.
Norev: a full-opening Volvo 850 T-5R wagon
The 1994 Volvo 850 T-5R estate in 1:18, in black and in Goose Yellow, limited to 1,000 pieces per colour and quoted for October. Norev is doing it as a full-opening diecast, not sealed resin. Reference numbers have not been published yet.
The T-5R wagon is one of the great nineties cult cars — the boxy Volvo estate that went touring car racing, in the yellow that nobody could believe Volvo signed off. It has been done before in resin and as a sealed model, but a full-opening diecast version, with Norev’s recent classic Porsches as the benchmark for what its metal tooling can do, is a different proposition. A thousand per colour is not many.
GT Spirit: the Corvette ZR1X
The hottest selling model of the year thus far, GT1027 — Chevrolet Corvette ZR1X, 2026, in black, 1:18, will be arriving in November 2026.
The ZR1X is the twin-turbo hybrid at the top of the C8 range and the most powerful Corvette ever built. In black it will live or die on how GT Spirit handles the aero, because the wing, the splitter and the underbody work are the entire visual argument for the car. Sealed resin, as always with this line.
AUTOart: a Grand Prix White 930
The Porsche 911 Turbo 3.0 (930) in Grand Prix White, expected in December. No reference number has been published.
This follows the Guards Red car announced last week. Grand Prix White on a narrow-body 3.0 Turbo with the whale tail is the reference specification for the shape — it is what the press cars wore, and it shows the bodywork better than any colour AUTOart could pick.
1:64
LookSmart takes the SF-26 down to 1:64
- LS64044 — Ferrari SF-26, Italian Grand Prix 2026, Lewis Hamilton
- LS64045 — Ferrari SF-26, Italian Grand Prix 2026, Charles Leclerc
Both quoted for the first quarter of 2027. No prices or edition sizes.
LookSmart announced the same two cars in 1:18 and 1:43 yesterday, so the interesting part is not the subject but the scale. LookSmart is a 1:18 and 1:43 resin house; a dedicated LS64 reference series is a move into territory Spark, Mini GT and Tarmac have had largely to themselves. Whether a 1:64 Formula One car at LookSmart’s standards can be priced against those is the question, and the company has not answered it yet.
Quick hits
- Two makers announced models of the same weekend’s racing within days of the flag. Spark has the Suzuka winner in four scales; nobody else has announced anything from the fiftieth running at all.
- Scale creep is running in both directions this week. Spark is going up to 1:8 and LookSmart is going down to 1:64, and both are moves outside the range each company built its reputation on.
- Prices here are manufacturer or importer figures where they were published — ACME in dollars and BBR in euros. Spark, Norev, GT Spirit, AUTOart and LookSmart have not published consumer prices for these, so none is given.
- Nothing new since yesterday from GLM, Stamp, KK-Scale, Kyosho, Tecnomodel, Sun Star, Minichamps, Mini GT or GP Replicas.
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.
For any questions or comments, please contact the club directly at club@diecast.org.
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