I'm not sure why we have been getting so many similar cars done by multiple companies. I guess it at least gives us an opportunity to get the car with the details and features we want the most. Maisto's GTO came out about a year ago. The Sunstar car arrived just recently. Each has it's strong and weak points. The Sunstar should have a slight advantage since it arrived second and should be able to address the criticisms leveled at the earlier Maisto. In the end, they each have their limitations it would appear.
Front the side, both look pretty good. The Sunstar car (blue) seems to have addressed the Maisto car's (red) too-short tail, but as we can see, the grill and overall nose area seem to be a step backward on the Sunstar.
The Sunstar seems to sit properly. The Maisto's always seem to sit a little too low, probably due to their sprung suspension. The Sunstar has rally wheels while the Maisto has Hurst wheels. I like the rally's best since I like my musclecars unmodified. While the Sunstar has a molded in roof, unlike the highly unpopular screwed-on plastic roof of the Maisto, the overall roof line of the Sunstar seems off. The slope of the rear window and windshield are too dramatic. The more perpendicular angles on the Maisto seem more accurate. Consequently, the rear window on the Sunstar appears to be too large. Sunstar does seem to get the paint on the wheel opening trim more accurately but the paint on the trim along the drip rails is sloppy and too wide.
Above I mentioned the grill. Now you can see what I mean. The grills on the Sunstar are too shallow and the shape at the outboard edges are inaccurate. The headlight bezels look off. The Maisto has an opening in the bumper with turn signal lenses clearly showing. The Sunstar has this area only painted and in the process the turn signal lenses appear less prominent. The hood scoop on the Sunstar is not open like on the Maisto, and this is more accurate to the 1:1 cars. The Sunstar does have an antenna unlike the Maisto. The cowl grill area is much better on the Sunstar.
This is a toss up for me: both are wrong. The tail of the '65 GTO should be more black than chrome and the tail light lenses should only be a hint of red behind black and chrome trim. The Sunstar has the black/chrome balance down better but the lenses are much too prominently red which ruins the effect. You can really see here how overly large the rear window is. The Maisto window is much more proportional to the car. The trunk lid fits poorly on the Sunstar but has nicer looking contours.
The necessary added length on the Sunstar is obvious here. Someone said the Maisto is too short in the rear-wheel-to-tail panel are and that the Sunstar is too long in this area. I'm not sure, which is more accurate to the real cars, but the Sunstar looks more accurate to my eye. At first I thought the crease running down the hood scoops on both were incorrect. A quick check with my GTO books proved me wrong, but the crease on the Sunstar seems too prominent. You can again see how large the gaps are around the Sunstar car's trunk lid. Window size differences can be seen as well.
Looking under the skin begins to show the Sunstar's strengths a bit. The engine compartment race clearly goes to Sunstar. Funny thing too, since most Sunstar cars have very weak engine compartments. Both could use some detailing, but the both also have nicely detailed parts and warning labels. The Sunstar has a great looking master cylinder while the Maisto only has a hint of one on the firewall. The valve covers look much better on the Sunstar. I do like the fact that the hood on the Sunstar opens far enough to let you see inside unlike the Maisto. The engine in the Sunstar seems to sit too low in the engine compartment however. Sunstar pretty much ruins the advantage by having a body color fire wall.
At first the interiors seem to be a toss up too. Then you notice the real chrome trim on the Sunstar seats which are only painted on the Maisto. The console on the blue car is also nicely detailed. The dashboards are different but I'd have to lean toward the Sunstar. At least the Sunstar dash runs from a-pillar to a-pillar unlike the Maisto dash which stops short of each a-pillar. The Sunstar does not have a parking brake pedal like the Maisto, but then that pedal on the Maisto is too prominent and too far inboard. Both cars have great door panels but the Sunstar's are slightly more cleanly detailed. The textures on the Sunstar interior parts look more real.
The trunks are kind of a toss up, both are clunky with oversized spare tires almost right in the middle of the trunk. At least the Sunstar gets closer to the proper color with a gray color more closely approximating the trunk spatter paint GM used in 1965. There seems to be room in the rear quarter area of both models to move the spare tire further outboard toward it's proper location so I'm baffled why they both look like this. At least the trunks open which is more than I can say about the majority of 1:18 models.
Of course the largest failure of the Maisto is the undercarriage. It is nothing short of an abomination. Sunstar is not well loved for their one-piece mold-everything-in undercarriages but at least they have made a nice looking undercarriage. The Sunstar is nicely shaped and proportioned and only falls short in a few areas. The undercarriage pan is too obviously one large casting which really shows at the edges and front and rear areas and like the Maisto the driveshaft is molded in. Of course the driveshaft on the Sunstar actually LOOKS like a driveshaft. And a huge award should go to Sunstar for making very subtle screw bosses (to hold it to the base in the box) in the chassis, they almost don't appear if you aren't looking for them. The Sunstar has a far superior front suspension and steering set up and even has an anti-sway bar which is missing altogether on the Maisto. The Sunstar also features a nicely painted gas tank and exhaust. I won't even comment on the Maisto exhaust. I don't really see why Sunstar put the little connector tab between the pipes just before the mufflers though. The transmission is molded into the chassis pan as well.
If I could find a way to graft the grills of the Maisto onto the Sunstar car I think I'd have the best of both worlds. Slapping a vinyl roof on the Maisto cars sure makes them look better but there is nothing that can be done with the Sunstar's oversized windows and incorrect a- and c-pillar slopes. Both are fairly decent models taken as a whole. If you like detail, the Sunstar seems to be the way to go, but just by a nose.