In Scale…

As a kid I used to love taking things apart. Whenever my parents would give me a battery-operated toy, it would not last a week. Trying to find out how things worked always fascinated me. I had the usual collection of diecast Matchbox cars enabling me to name most cars on the road. But it was when I was introduced to plastic scale models that brought everything to a whole new level. Plastic models depict a certain subject in miniature, in a specific scale. The most common scale is 1:24 or 1:25. The beauty here is when you assemble the subject and the parts that make up the full-sized subject, it is also present in miniature. I remember the old Revell and Monogram kits of American muscle cars. You would have to assemble the engine, the interior and the drive train. There were some kits that were motorized. It would have a small electric motor to drive the rear wheels and two AA-sized batteries as a power source. You could paint the cars as a factory offered car or one depicting a famous racecar.

Now these are not fancy plastic toys. Models have an important role to play when it comes to the development of a real car. For a stylist or designer, a rendering on paper would be done first. Then a scale model would be made to visualize how the car would look and determine its proportions. If the big bosses like what they see, a full-sized clay model is commissioned to give the designers a better feel of how the rendering would look full size. If the full-sized model is approved, a full-sized mock up is commissioned to determine manufacturing issues, with engineers and designers locking horns. What will work, what won’t. Although nowadays computers have taken up most of the work. Computer aided design software is used to render a concept and they could even do simulations before even one part is ever produced. But somewhere in the process, a scale model will still be needed. A 3D (three-dimensional) rendering can’t fully give the feel of proportioning.