Modelling: It's about time that they....

1/18th scale

the years and

Lindberg tried a line of 1/20 scale cars which were pretty darned good for the most part. They bombed big time. I think you underestimate the RC (Resistance to Change) factor.

scale

over the years and

I've got one of those around here somewhere. I think it's either a Grand Cherokee or an Explorer. Nice kit. Oddball scale. I think that hurt it the most. I throw

1/18th out there as an example as it seems to have gained acceptance. I'm thinking a nice 1/18th scale '40 Ford would look really nice beside this big 1/18th scale Thunderbolt I saw at Walmart the other night. One of those Ultimate Soldier action figure prebuilts you usually see at Toys 'R Us.

Oh believe me, Al, I know full well the power of the RC cult. I'm a culprit myself on many an occasion. I've also seen a good idea come along and many a person slap their heads and say now why didn't anyone think of that before. I'm shooting for a solution that is just to the right of dead center between the upprights.

WmB

To reply, get the HECK out of there snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net

With diecast collectors, sure. And I just remembered that ERTL marketed some of its 1/18 diecasts as kits a few years back - they didn't seem to sell very well either.

Given the high quality of almost all the Japanese-made car kits and even many RC2 (AMT) and Revell-Monogram kits nowadays I suspect that mainstream car modelers would be just as averse to switching to

1/18 as they were to 1/20.

I have the Jurrassic Park Ford Explorer (kit doesn't look like the movie version) in this scale. It is a nice kit though. Rob Gronovius Visit my motor pool in the

gallery

Hybrids. I hate those things.

You're a tough sell Al.

If only I could convince 10 of you to vote for 1/18th. ;-)

WmB

Two words... Accurate Miniatures. They tried to raise the bar and look what happened. And I know all about the history of said company, thank-you. My point still stands.

RobG (the Aussie one)

Addtionally, my

room to elevate the

expectation among

Nice boxart. Same

pan and rails,

the front grille

and a couple of

driveshaft thrown in there

older cars. Most of

big question I guess

fancy boxart for

lines of 1/18th scale

over the years and

know that when I saw

results they got

building models for a

1/18th you can work in

and make a fair

mainstream car

foster with their

standbys, but I know that

world will not

respond to. The

illusory. Such is a life

Yep, that I am. You should know that I'm one of the most opinionated posters in the group! ;-p

Al, not really! It's more like, how is the tire shaped? Sure, with an aircraft tire looking as much like a donut as anything, the relatively simple tread patters can, and are done in hard styrene, also with some antique car tires. However, with the advent of the Balloon tire in the middle 1920's, automotive tires gained a much flatter tread, with deeply engraved patterns. With this kind of tire, the only way to mold one accurately is to use either rubber or soft PVC. Soft materials allow the finished tire to be ejected from the mold without losing this detail, where with harder stock, such as styrene, the raised engraving in the tool (raised engraving produces recessed detail) would simply tear and scrape away the interfering styrene, and eventually ruin the tooling itself.

Art Anderson

John,

Yes, those old Revell 55-57 Chevies were technically interesting, if inaccurate (and that they are). However, the door hinges they were forced to design really don't open those doors in the same way as on the real car.

When car doors were hung on exposed hinges (prior to about 1935-36), hinging them was an easy affair--the hinges stuck out through the side of the car, much like the hinges on the doors in your home. However, with the desire for a smooth-looking body shell, designers had to come up with ways to bury the hinges inside the thickness of the body sides.

On a real car from the late 30's through today, the door is hinged right at the post or pillar, with the pivot point inside the thickness of the shell, which makes the door seemingly "turn inward" into the bodywork as it opens. This can be scratchbuilt into a model car, but it would be almost prohibitive, and incredibly delicate to try and mold the kit parts that way, hence the somewhat funky hinging that Revell used on those old Chevy kits, and which AMT used on their '57 Ford Fairlane HT. Those doors actually swing completely away from the body shell, in a very toy-like fashion, much like the low-priced diecast models today.

As for detail? Have you really looked at some of the model car kits that have been tooled in the last 10 years or so? Lots of them have detail that was undreamed of 30-40 years ago.

Art Anderson

Al,

Very correct. Model car builders, as a group, tend to be very constant-scale oriented--we all seem to want each car we build to relate to the others on our shelves. Of course, there are those of us who really don't bother to keep things in any constant scale, for those the model is the thing, not so much that it relates directly to another car in the collection.

George Toteff, the man who founded MPC in the early 1960's (and who revived Lindberg about 12-13 years ago) had a "thing" about 1:20 scale--he apparently thought it was the ultimate, just a little bit larger than 1:25, but small enough to not overpower one's display space. However, he was up against the

1;25 scale juggernaut of AMT, JoHan, and Revell, which had already established a huge market for 1:25, and most of the relatively few MPC 1:20th scale kits died on the store shelves, big time. Monogram also tried 1:20th scale, it didn't do any better for them either.

Toteff's management team at Lindberg had to find out once more, all over again, that 1:20 scale just isn't a very viable scale for kitting model cars.

I'm with you on 1:18 scale. It really doesn't translate into mass-production sales of model car kits, been tried, found seriously wanting, in the marketplace. 1:18 scale diecast, on the other hand, really gets a completely different market (oh yeah, there is some crossover from the model builders) made up of individuals who either don't want to, or can't (in their own minds at least) build a model themselves.

Art Anderson

Some go so far as to build *only* in 1/25 _or_ 1/24 scale. As if all kits labeled "1/25" or "1/24" actually were the advertised scales.

Really? I've never met such a person and I'm in three clubs, entering my

20th year as an adult builder, and have dozens of internet buddies. None build 1/25 unless a favored subject happens to only be available in it.

If

We have 1/12, 1/24 and 1/20 parts for those.

Tom

Not familiar with military builders?

Tom

Hard to pass up nice diecasts at Sam's Club for as little as $10, less than 1/3rd the price of some Tamiya kits, especially when the subjects were never kitted, like the McLaren F1 or Porsche #1 or 550. One could have had a Porsche Carrera GT 18 months ago in diecast. Car is just coming out now and still no kits yet. I'll never get everything built anyway.

Tom

along with the hundreds of German and American figures.

Tamiya makes an 8 pack Desert Rats and Dragon makes a 4 pack Commonwealth figures set. there might be a Red Devil's set out too. Last time I checked it was a "world war" with more than two countries involved.

Craig

T'ain't just the figures. I just finished typing the list of models I'd built into an Excel spreadsheet when I realize that the JB kit of the Vickers Light Tank Mk VI is the *only* injection-molded kit (that I know of) of any of the British light tank series, in any scale. There are a few epoxy models in various scales, mainly intended for wargaming, but they're not in the same ballpark as an injection-molded kit.

For that matter, aside from the Crusader (lots of kits) and the Comet (a few kits, all old and not particularly great) the only models of any of the British Cruiser tanks are the relatively new releases from Tamiya of the Cromwell and Centaur.

The Infantry tanks are better presented overall; lots of kits of A12 Matilda II's, Valentines, and Churchills, but there are no kits at all in any scale of the Infantry Tank Mark I, A11 Matilda I.

Heck, it's only very recently we've seen non T-34, non-KV-1 Russian tanks for WWII.

Don't get me started on the Japanese, Italians, Poles, French...

For that matter, we don't even have complete coverage of US WWII vehicles. Any kits of the M6 Heavy Tank? M22 Locust? M7 Medium Tank? That big T-28/T-

95 monstrosity? Any US medium tank earlier than the M3 Lee? Any US light tank earlier than the M3 Stuart?

Oh, woe is unto us. Woe, woe. Whoa. Woah!

DLF

Check into the Maquette and Mirage lines, there are some in there.

Um, not so, Tamiya hd both the T-34 and KV-1 out in the 70's.

There's the M3 Grant and the T-28 monster was done in resin.

Tom,

Very, very familiar! However, when one considers the extremely "free-form" nature of the model car builders, all else seems to pale in comparison.

Where the vast majority of military modelers (armor, aircraft, ships) tend to recreate, as exactly as they can, subjects that exist or existed in real life (which of course a lot of car modelers also do), replica model cars are very much a minority at contests and NNL's.

Why? Simply because, just as in real life, people are constantly customizing, hot-rodding, or otherwise modifying actual cars to suit themselves and their particular whims or tastes, which leads modelers to feel the same "freedom" to do so. Car modelers often will pick up a kit just for that desired engine for a swap, a cool set of mags or tires--on and on. Whether or not the built results replicate something that actually has been seen on the street, racetrack, dragstrip or real car show isn't the thing here--the individual freedom to "do it their way" is. Feeding this "freedom" further is the immense variety of model car aftermarket kits, transkits, parts, accessories and other materials. Feeding the interest is the sheer volume of potential subjects that can only be obtained by the mix-and-match of kits, parts and accessories from all over. Thus this also feeds the desire of car modelers to have lots of kits in constant, or near constant scale.

This sort of thing does occur with military subjects. Of course, there is a wide variety of aftermarket accessories, even kits for the military modeler, decals as well. And paint? Sheesh! Military modelers have it all over the car modeler when it comes to the availability of correct (at least in the eyes of a lot of modelers!) colors of paint, something which car modelers constantly have to chase for.

Military modelers, of course do all manner of conversions, however, most seems to be done with an eye to replication, rather than some sort of creative masterpiece of "customizing" in the sense that cars get this treatment.

Art Anderson

Tom,

Regardless of where you live, or the memberships of the clubs to which you belong, Bill is correct: The vast majority of car modelers do their thing in

1:24/1:25 scale, otherwise why would manufacturers constantly favor these scales, particularly in plastic kits.

The perusal of any of the comprehensive model car kit guides that have been published will show this to be so. Now, of course, for sheer variety World-wide, 1:43 scale probably beats all scales for subject matter, but in the USA, such kits are fairly hard to come by, very few shops stock that scale, partly on price, but mostly because in this country, 1:43 scale is pretty much a "niche" market. In fact, most all 1:43 scale kits are made in extremely low quantities, often less than 1000, which again supports my contention here.

Yes, there are larger scale models, 1:20, 1:18, 1:16, 1:12, and 1:8 scales. But, by and large, those scales see relatively few subjects ever done, and while there no doubt are aftermarket accessories, even a few resin body shells done for them, the stuff that is done is generally quite subject-specific, due to the limited market for aftermarket in the larger scales.

And, BTW, I've been a member of 5 different model car clubs over the past 25 years, plus one IPMS chapter. What scale dominates in all those organizations (which in total, represent perhaps 250 modelers)?

1:24/1:25, by a wide, wide margin.

Art Anderson