In 1993, when I was 12, I visited the Florida Mall, Orlando during my first culturally charged foray into the United States. While I was there, in a branch of Smoke ‘N ‘Snuff, I bought a ludicrously overpriced Maisto model of the Jaguar XJ220 in 1:18th scale. Whether it was a £/$ exchange rate SNAFU, or simply my naivity as to Smoke ‘N Snuff’s pricing policy, I paid about three times as much as I would have in the UK.
I love that car, and I loved that model. I admired it for the rest of my vacation and I fiddled with it on board the Delta L1011-500 which took me home at the end. Then, on returning home, when unloading our suitcases from the cavernous load bay of what would later become my first Rover, my beloved XJ220 tumbled from the parcel shelf onto the rough concrete below, losing a mirror, scuffing the glass and breaking the rear aerofoil in the process. I was heartbroken. My XJ220 ownership experience has been a tarnished one.
Up until now.


In the early 90’s the Maisto model range was about the most comprehensive out there. Maisto and Bburago stood as almost the default model car makers, others were available but hard to come by, at least around my neck of the woods. They were always pretty quick to leap at new marketing opportunities and most of the major supercars of the day were represented by them pretty soon after lunch.
They offered realistic models of the Jaguar XJ220 in a variety of scales. Those less privileged than 12 year old me could buy a 1:24 version, but I never thought that scale quite big enough to satisfy. 1:18 was a scale that I liked, and the extra size allowed for extra complexity and detail. I LOVE complexity and detail.
Then, if you were positively swimming in money, there was a 1:12 scale version. This was the sort of thing, I thought, that The Queen might buy for the princes at Christmas. This was almost the size of the real thing, and as far as I was concerned pretty much the same COST as the real thing.

So here’s one I bought second hand on eBay for £14.50 posted. OK, it had been on display for a while, and was a bit dirty, part of one of the windscreen wipers is missing and a wing mirror needed re-attaching, but it still has absolutely enormous presence and, once tidied up a bit, promised to look every bit the part.
The gentleman who owned it before me obviously had considerable pride in it; having built (very nicely) a custom wooden display stand for it, re-using the Maisto nametag but adding a genuine (and gold plated!) Jaguar emblem. It has been, in its lifetime, a nice piece.

The key ingredient here is size. The extra mass of this model compared to the 1:18 iteration is obvious, and surprisingly profound. It lends it such extra gravitas and presence that visitors to your house can’t help but notice it. It’s big enough that it becomes a focal point. Where mine is currently positioned it completely overpowers any ornaments that Nicola has put on display…
By today’s standards this is a basic model, there’s no hiding that. The doors open on unrealistic doglegs, inexcusable on a 1:12 model today. There isn’t a particularly long list of features, either. There are no more moving parts or functional aspects than the 1:18 possesses. The headlamp lids don’t drop down as per the original and the rear luggage cover doesn’t open, and this is entirely due to the fact that twenty three years ago this kind of realism simply wasn’t expected.

Overall it recreates the stance and feel of the XJ220 pretty well, though I have very slight misgivings over the accuracy of the shape. The roofline is somehow not quite curvaceous enough and the front fenders seem a little less, I don’t know, pert than they should be.
 
That’s not to say detail isn’t there. The slatted rear grille and concealed tail-lamps (Rover 200 series parts, fact fans!) look great, and there are a pair of individually modelled side indicator lamps on the doors. The front compartment is the most disappointing bit, with a pair of roughly simulated electric cooling fans as the sum total of the detail. So I didn’t bother taking a photo of it at all.

The cabin is pretty nice. There is a simulated carpet as well as fabric seatbelts with a moveable belt catch, the shape of the dashboard and the appearance of its buff coloured leather is well reproduced, though it’s hard to the touch rather than padded as in real life. Of course it is. Maisto would never have offered a padded dashboard in 1992, would they?

In the passenger footwell is a fire extinguisher with legible labelling (now time expired!). The centre panel of the dashboard has its switchgear marked and painted in relief and looks great. The dials are printed onto a sticker, which is a little disappointing, though they correctly continue onto the driver’s door and I suppose photo-etching wasn’t really a thing yet in the nineties. Overall the interior is nice to look at and looks like an XJ220. That’s probably enough.
Further credos goes to the inclusion of fake stitching on the edges of those areas which bear a fake leather texture, and a set of moveable sunvisors, as well as nice-looking XJ220-scripted kick-strips.

The highlight of the model (and this goes for the 1:18th version too) is undoubtedly under the engine cover, which on this big version opens on a set of gas supports. It’s all there, with the Jaguar script beautifully cast onto the intake and the XJ220 logo set on the cylinder head valve covers. There seems to have been an inordinate amount of effort expended on getting the air conditioning plumbing right, and many of the bits of pipework can be traced around the engine compartment, including a little turbocharger picked out in detail on each side.

The whole lot is displayed in a nicely recreated aluminium cradle; an aspect of the XJ220 which has been observed well in this model. Overall I can’t justifiably fault anything under that tinted plexiglass canopy. It certainly looks as special as it should on a jumbo-scale model.
Out of interest I handed the whole shebang over to my wife, to get her opinion. Now, cars aren’t exactly here speciality subject, yet she manages to be unfailingly perceptive when it comes to detail analysis. She always seems to hit the nail bang on the head. When I took her out in a 2007 Honda Accord, she said that it felt like the front end didn’t feel like it was attached to the rear end. And that was exactly what it DID feel like. She picked up on that from the passenger seat.
The XJ220 looked colossal in her lap as she prodded and poked it, and then she delivered her verdict.
“It makes me think of the Barbie Motorhome.”
Shit.
She was right. The Barbie Motorhome was surprisingly detailed yet legendarily plasticky.. It creaked and it flexed when you handled it. And to a lesser extent, so does this XJ220.

It feels that, in scaling up from 1:18 to 1:12 the XJ220 has lost some of what I love about model cars. Namely, precision. Somehow the bigger car feels far more toy-like, less the crisp of a delicate adult-oriented work of art. It no longer feels like a “proper model”. It’s weird.
And there we have it. I’m enormously glad that this model has fallen into my hands, and especially glad that it only cost me £14.50. But I actually like it less than the 1:18 rendition.
Looking at the world of 1:12 as it stands today, the Maisto XJ220 looks completely outclassed. With virtually no exceptions, everything on the market in this scale today is a money-no object work of art for determined collectors, who presumably have massive houses with space to display them properly. A Maisto XJ220 really wouldn’t fit into a collection of modern 1:12s at all well, and is really best left as a novelty item. I suspect the Cadillac Eldorado which Maisto also offered in 1:12 is in the same boat.
So I’ll be sticking with 1:18, firstly because I like that scale the most, and secondly because I don’t have money falling out of my arse.
(All images copyright Chris Haining / Hooniverse 2015)