Well, one of the first things I learned when I got my job in a maritime museum is that the phrase "museum-quality model" is utterly useless. I've seen some awful models in museums. And a good museum acquires models for plenty of reasons that go beyond "quality" as a modern modeler would define it.
Example: the "Isaac Hull model" of the Constitution in the Peabody-Essex Museum. By the standards of any serious scale ship modeler in 2015, it's a piece of junk. (No steering wheel, primitive carvings, no trucks on the gun carriages, a big nail spiking each gun barrel into place, etc., etc.) What makes it interesting - and unquestionably makes it belong in a museum - is its historical provenance. Viewed in that context, it's one of the most important and valuable ship models in the world.
I fervently wish the phrase "museum quality" would disappear from the modeling vocabulary. It doesn't mean anything.
I don't want this thread to turn into another argument about the accuracy of the Heller SR kit; we've beaten that one to death in that other thread. But, for what it's worth, I think a scale ship model that claims to represent a real ship needs to be based (directly or indirectly) on contemporary plans (or, in their absence, some other persuasive primary source material). I have no problem with educated reconstructions (e.g., the Mayflower II or the Elizabeth II). And I'm currently working on a model of a Gloucester fishing schooner that never existed. And if Heller had labeled that kit "Seventeenth-Century French Ship-of-the-Line," I wouldn't complain. But the company represents it as a scale model of a particular ship. Bill Morrison, the most articulate defender of the kit whom I've encountered, suggests the generous interpretation is that Heller designed a model that represents a different ship than the company claims it represents. And that the designers didn't know which ship they were representing.
One thing that nags at me whenever I get into a discussion about this subject: I really have no idea what the extant information about either of the real Soleil Royals is. Have contemporary plans for either ship been found? Are any of their dimensions recorded? Just how much is known about either of those ships? Has any scholar who really knows what he's doing done a serious reconstruction of either Soleil Royal? I don't know.
If we were talking about a British warship, the research would be relatively easy: look up the plans at the National Maritime Museum (and pay through the nose to get copies of them). Or, for a seventeenth-century ship, work out the lines based on contemporary texts in naval architecture. (British warship lines in those days were based on fairly simple mathematical formulas.) If you want to build an American sailing warship, go to the National Archives. (But first, look up the ship in Howard I. Chapelle's books.) But I know nothing about the primary sources on French seventeenth-century ships.
I have a sneaking suspicion that French ship modelers have already wrestled their way through all these problems, and are laughing at us.
I recently bought a fine, new book on seventeenth-century Dutch warships. (No plans, but comprehensive lists.) I sure wish somebody would publish something similar on the French navy.
Regarding American clipper ships - I agree that there ought to be more 1/96-scale kits. I know of only three: the Lindberg plastic Sea Witch, the Model Shipways Flying Fish, and the Bluejacket Red Jacket. But then, the whole realm of sailing ships is barely represented in the kit market. (How many whaleship kits are out there? How many British ships-of-the-line, other than the Victory? How many British merchant vessels other than the Cutty Sark? How many American sailing warships other than the Constitution?) All the serious scale sailing ship kits on the market probably could be counted on the fingers and toes of two or three people. If you want to get depressed, compare that to the world of scale aircraft modeling.
But there are quite a few good American clipper plans, drawn by modern scholars on the basis of primary sources, out there. The clipper drawings by William Crothers, for instance, are among the finest pieces of drafting and research I've ever seen. For better or worse, the only way to build up a really comprehensive collection of sailing ship models is to work from scratch.