You can do like I do--I'm a nostalgia builder, I build a lot of kits that I built when I was a kid, and I find most of my kits today on the second-hand market--eBay, modeling shows, flea markets, etc. I don't turn my nose up at new, contemporary kits, but I enjoy picking up an old Monogram airplane kit, along with the kits from Academy, HobbyBoss, Eduard, etc.
Having said that, I'll say that yes, Tamiya kits are generally considered to be of good quality, and relatively easy to build, or better expressed, hard to mess up. There's no kit that really just falls together. Just as you're cruising along on some build, you get lulled into a false sense of security, and it's then that you realize that you left out some vital part, when you've just finished gluing up the fuselage/body/hull.
You've got a couple of threads going to ask about various P-51 kits, and I recommend that you build them all. Not all at once, understanding that you've got a budget to follow. But set it as a goal, perhaps, to start with one, the Tamiya kit, say, and then to build the Airfix kit. Maybe do the new release by Airfix, and then track down the older release, just to see what it was like and how it compares to the new one. Then get some from some other makers, like the Monogram P-51B. By the way, I must respectfully disagree with a previous comment that Monogram and Revell kits are harder to put together, I haven't had that experience myself.
There are a lot of guys who build a collection of models along those lines. I do that, for example, I like to see how different manufacturers approached designing a kit of the same subject.
Hope that helps!
