500 internal server error on request to Node server from React client
Solution 1:
The response returned by axios.get has no set method, because it is not an express response object. Therefore, your response.set("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "*") statement throws an exception, which you catch and convert into a 500 Internal Server Error.
What you probably want instead is
res.set("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "*");
but that could be better achieved with an additional middleware
router.use(cors());
before the router.get("/models/:makeid", ...). (See the cors package.)