Toy cars

As a kid I used to love taking things apart… my parents would give me battery-operated toys and it would not last a week. Trying to find out how things work always fascinated me. I had the usual diecast Matchbox cars and soon I was able to name most cars on the road. But it was when I was introduced to plastic scale models… then that brought everything to a whole new level. Plastic models depict a certain subject in miniature. In a specific scale. Most common scale is 1/24th or 1/25th. The beauty here is you assemble the subject and the parts that make up the full-sized subject 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 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 the rendering would look in 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 wont. 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 rendering can’t fully give the feel of proportioning.