When i started collection about 20 years my first scale model was a 1/18 car of Jos Verstappen (dad of Max Verstappen). The detail of 1/18 were great and are still. The 1/43 were good and 1/64 were almost quality of toy cars. The details and quality were not that great. The last 5 years you can definitely see that the production process has gone up and therefore the quality has gone up. but you can see it over the complete line. 1/18 are even better then 20 years ago. The 1/43 have the quality of the 1:18 20 years ago.
I now have a couple of 1/64 scales and there you can see the difference:
The first one is a Minichamps(64) made in 2010 of a 1976 Porsche driven by Toine Hezemans. You can see that the details are just a bit bulkier. If you look inside the rollbar really is really refined in the details. Nog that it’s a complete block of plastic, but it’s noticeable.
The other car i have is a 1/64 scale from Tarmac and based upon a Nissan where one of the drivers was Tom Coronel. The detail is on all sides better, even the box (that’s even signed by Tom Coronel) has a nicer appearance.
So in my opinion 1/64 is indeed the new 1/43. With the prices of 1/43 going up and the 1/18 will even cost you almost a kidney the 1/64 is a very good alternative to 1/43. In a my display case (an IKEA Bertby display case) where i normally can only display 1 1/18 and at best 6 1/43, i can display about 10 to 12 (or maybe even more) 1/64 scale models.
You can be picky and say that the details for 1/43 and 1/18 are better and when you look at the overall quality, those are still better, but the prices are also higher. If you collect for the fun of collecting, 1/64 is a great way to expand your collection and not only have “toy” cars in you display cases.
