I'm an airplane guy who wants to build some F1 cars, 1/24 scale. Prefer the older cars, 60s and 70s. What is a good first kit to get my feet wet. I would consider myself an intermediate modeler.TIA

WAY more choice if you go up a scale to 20th.

In 24th a few Model Factory Hiros but they are in the $300 US level.

Hasegawa had a couple 60s Hondas, but OOP, so you'll have to do some lookin'. EBay prob.

Revell Germany has a few modern ones, like last ten yrs modern. Ferrari, Williams or Sauber I think.

Heller and whoever bought their molds made a Lotus 49 back in the 70s. A F3 Brabham and Matra too. A very hard kit to build. Lots of cool parts but many of the were warped. I'm thinking Union in Japan reboxed the Hellers.

In 20th scale a huge world opens up. Punch in the right keywords on the HLJ site to get some idea. Hiro, Tamiya, Hasegawa (?) and Studio 27 (I think) for starters. Mostly moderns but more than a few 60s, 70s types.

Tamiya has a beautiful Lotus 25 kit, and a 60s Honda. Hiro just released the March 711 and Lotus 72 but for BIG bucks. They also did the Lotus 49, March 701, some Ferraris and others. They'll all show up on the HLJ site.

I am like you: mainly an aircraft modeler and dabble in race cars (mainly F1) occasionally. There is a kit listing over at f1m.com that will show you what is (was) available so you can a choose.

F1 kit database

You can download a spreadsheet of the list in xls or csv format (the orange buttons near the bottom left of the page) and re-arrange it by scale to see what has been kitted. Nearly everything these days it seems is in 1/20th scale, but there are (were) kits in 1/24th or 1/25th scale. They are just harder to find. I chose 1/24th and 1/25th scale to match some of the other car models I had, but 1/20th scale seems to be today's choice (even Hasegawa has changed over).

Gary