Tomica - Toyota Crown Athlete

This is a die cast car model of Toyota Crown Athlete from the 12th Generation of the "Toyota Crown" car series produced by Toyota under the "Model S180" from 2003 to 2008. This die cast car model is produced by Takara Tomy thru their popular Tomica series.

This car can produce decent power while also giving better fuel economy and offers the largest interior size among its contemporaries, more than the Mercedes-Benz E-Class or BMW 5-series at that time.

I'm a fan for "Toyota Crown" series but since I only work as a farmer now, I still can't afford to buy any of those "Toyota Crown" - they are not overly expensive like many other modern cars, I just can't afford it yet. However, at least I can afford this miniature die cast model of it at reasonable price.


So, let's have a look at this car;

Features and detailing of the car.... we can see the "Toyota Crown" logo at the front and next to it is the word "Athlete". They use plastic parts and some sticker for the front lights (or is it headlamps?);

At the rear side, we can see the word "Athlete" with "Toyota" logo in the middle and the word "Crown". They just use paint for the brake lights details;

This model comes with openable front doors;






And with the openable doors, we can see the interior detailing but then this is where it get's ugly;

As you can see from the picture above, there is no dashboard.... just a mere steering wheel... I'm sick of it... this is truly disappointing even for Tomica standard who happen to always provide "average level" of interior detailing. See the pictures below;

Without doubt, I feel that this is one of the most disappointing car I've ever bought from Tomica series. The interior detailing on this model is totally reckless. The car deserve better respect than this. It's true that dome of other Tomica vehicles doesnt provide interior detailing also on the cockpit part, for example this Subaru Sambar Mini Truck. Then again, at least on that model, the door is not openable, so for that particular model, I can accept it, but on this one, certainly it's unbelievable.

Overall, this is still a nice miniature replica of the particular Toyot Crown Athlete. The painting finishing on this particular item is good and the external markings and decal works are equally good as well. However, at least for me personally, the interior detailing is disappointing.

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