>>10378431Their new stuff is pretty good. Its not a secret what has happened with them, they are pretty open about it. Humbrol pretty much ran it into the ground, since Hornby bought it they want to run it as a going concern. They aren't really as big a company as people might assume, someone like Eduard has more in-house capability, so its step by step.
Old kits are shifted to the Vintage Classics line which is surprisingly popular it seems (I'm going to build the Bond Bug and you can't stop me, you'd always see it in old catalogues but never in person, it has a quite underserved mystique). Airfix has quite a strong cultural presence and is known outside the hobby to point of confusing it with all model kits and it has a strong emotional pull as well for us anyway.
All that said, if you don't like British subjects, it may not really be for you.
>>10378448I know what you mean by the CAD issue but I think its the 3D scanning stuff that really doesn't help. You end up with a model kit with no modelling in it. They do make lots of test builds albeit off the 3D printer. They were saying recently that they felt they'd got better at working with tool makers which may speak to panel lines in future.