MalcolmL, here's another view. I'll put on my flame suit.
I own a 7X12 mini lathe and love it. It will not make big cuts like the larger lathes but thats fine with me. I got this lathe to do aircraft modeling work and it does it very well. I can't imagine needing anything bigger. This being a cheaper Chinese lathe it did need to be disassembled cleaned, lubed and reassembled. It can hold a half thousand and thats close enough for what I do. Variable speed is real nice, if part starts to chatter just nudge speed up a bit. Plus it's reversible, and this is handy when turning threads. It may not hold its value over the next 10 years but then again I only paid $300.00 for it, and I would dare guess that the larger lathes will at least loose that much value over the same 10 years. Tooling is available at reasonable prices.
If you can afford and have space by all means buy a bigger US, UK, or DE made lathe. But if all your interested in is small modeling projects the mini lathe should serve you well.
Here's some links: www.mini-lathe.com and www.littlemachineshop.com
2 Piece