Historical Accuracy - Is it important

[Dangermouse]

I recall in the last year or so that Scalextric released the the livery of the #29 1970 Sebring GT40 as a MK II car even though it was actually a MK I . A quick look in Ronnie Spain's book told me that the 1970 Sebring car was chassis 1049 - which also did a stint as a Gulf coloured car in 1967.

Now I see NSR have also released this livery - once again as a MKII car.

Scalextric also released one of the 1966 Daytona cars correctly as a MK II car but they put the snorkels on the back even though they weren't part of the car for that race.

This made me wonder about a couple of things :-

Is historical accuracy important to you?

If these are toys and marketed as toys - why do they do new releases of cars each year (how many GT40s now) that are recreations of accurate cars - surely the market is actually collectors or adult enthusiasts in which case accuracy should be quite important.

How many other cars have manufacturers got wrong?

and lastly who does the research smile.gif no actually my question is: Is there an avenue for this forum (or others) to act as a research sounding board to help manufacturers get it right?

Perhaps there is too much at stake too let the livery / model be known ahead of time - but then if you get it wrong you probably will lose sales anyway - e.g. I have quite a few GT40s in the collection but I didn't buy the #29 car

DM

[Modlerbob]

For some people these are inexcusable errors and they will not buy such a flawed item. I think for most of us it is not so important. I didn't buy the Ford GT40 in question but not because of the error. I did buy the 1966 Daytona winner and runner up and just fixed them to more closely resemble the actual car. Now in the diecast model world I would insist on a high level of accuracy right down to the color of the seat belts but to me the first and most important feature of a slot car is whether it runs well or can at least be made to run well. Slight fudging of the dimensions and details can be forgiven if the car performs well, ie NSR. Since switching from 1/24th scale lexan blobs to race I do like the fact that for the most part these 1/32nd scale hard plastic or resin slot cars can easily be recognised as the car they are depicting. I don't get too upset about missing or misplaced details or slightly fudged dimensions as I realise they are basically only toy cars.

[Florida_Slotter]

[Nor Cal Mike]

I think it comes down to, how much do you want to pay for your slot car? Do you want to pay for completely different tooling for every variable that even a single car might go through in its lifetime? Now multiply that across all of its sister cars, produced and raced across the same period of time.

[rocky top racer]

Agree with Mike:It all comes down to cost vs accuracy. Personally, I prefer to pay less for my toys. I think Carrera currently strikes a nice balance.

[waaytoomuchintothis]

First of all, it doesn't cost more to get it right, unless you are starting with a mold for another car and trying to pass it off, stupid copyright laws and censorship notwithstanding. But there are limits to both sides of this. On the one hand, rivet counting is generally not considered worthwhile, but the idiotic, no excuse for it, failures (a recent orange Charger Daytona for example, or a historic one-of-a-kind car presented as a repaint of a completely different car, etc.), is generally reviled by everybody, while painting a car a shade of pinkish red fluorescent opaque when it should be deep metallic red has little effect because although the red is in almost all the racing pictures, there was a pinkish paint job on that car at one time, not during the racing career, but someone really did paint that car that color at one time. So, if it isn't completely wrong, it really comes down to preference, or maybe tolerance. And tolerance is governed by the price. The more you pay, the higher the standard of accuracy you have a right to expect.

Also, as we have said many times, we are a mixed bag here on HRW, and there are folks here who care less about the looks of a car than the speed. Then there are scale racer slot cars where a 1950s car doing 500mph in scale speed is just silly. It seems to me that folks who came to slot cars by way of model trains enjoy seeing the cars when they run and demand greater accuracy because they can see the car, whereas really speedy cars flash by so fast you wouldn't know if it was running backwards so details don't matter much when its on the track, at least.

[DaveKennedy]

Accuracy is VERY important to me personally and I know to Carrera in general. I do a lot of research for the US models and so does the design director.
Getting shapes, colors and decorations correct is often required by licensing... which is why licensing is important, it helps you as a consumer get a car that's correct.
That's not to say that from time to time fantasy decorations are done but they are usually done with the full approval of the licensing agreement and those decorations are approved the company that grants the license.

[ddyke]

Never point out a car is way too big or you will get called "rivet counter" or said to be a member of the scale police. To me it is important if I have seen the car and it , well, err, just looks wrong like the VMG Mk 8s.

[VenturaAlfa]

Does the overall look of the car resemble the car as it was driven? If yes, good enough for me :lol: . I haven't gone and looked up the Cheetah Carreras in the 1:1 world because those cars look great and run great whether their accurate or not. Do I care if the blue or the red might not be the right hue? No, the cars run great and look even better, for me case closed.

As a former worker and racer I'm always amused by people saying a race car has to be historically accurate and then citing one or two pictures they found on the internet as proof the car is not accurate. Generally, those individuals are not correct. I've said it before and I'll say it again, when are you talking about a particular car; what race and was it practice, qualifying or the race itself?

I'll give a great example: Mario Andretti drove a Lola T160 in the Stardust Grand Prix (not a 170 which is what has been reported over and over again). The car had different sponsors for each of the days of qualifying as well as a different sponsor for the race itself. The car also had different font versions of the number 3 on it during those days. It had two different exhaust systems on it. After that race it was driven by other drivers in different races with completely different colors of red, sponsors and fonts for the number 3 as well as different exhausts and, at one point, a different engine (Who knows how many different engine combinations there actually were). So which one is historically accurate? Answer: they all are. I've seen different people on different sites arguing over that car a number of times. All versions of it are correct. To build it I used a car strombecker called a T170 and an actual photo that my dad took at the race and made my copy of the car. Doesn't look like the other versions I've seen of it but, as I said, my dad took the photo at the race itself so I know my car is accurate for that car on that day at least from the front and the driver's side.

I've raced the car in my avatar as the number 58 (when I bought it) and the number 54 with two different fonts. Its run in E prod, G prod and H prod. Sponsors were changed at almost every race. Fender flares were changed, colors of the fuchs were changed, width of the rims was changed to fit the class it was racing in, colors on the car were changed, spoilers on the front and the back were changed, engines were changed. That's in 3 years of racing. If you made a version of my car the only historical accuracy would be if you based it on a picture taken at a particular race and on that particular day of racing. SCCA used to run two days of practice, a day of qualifying and a final race day. (true in Can Am and Trans Am back in the day). The cars often changed during each of those. So which one is correct? You be the judge. But any car is only ever accurate to one particular picture or series of pictures that someone has and the accuracy is only as good as the pictures.

Gurney, Jones, Foyt, Hall, Petty, Andretti and everybody else who raced with them all used to move wheel bases in or out, change wheel sizes and styles, pull out fenders (usually by rolling a baseball bat between the fender and the tire), push fenders in, cut wheel wells, add winglets, take off winglets, add wings, change wings, change ride height, change sponsors, add sponsors, delete sponsors all during practice or qualifying and, at times, even during race day if they could get away with it. So which car is accurate? Again, you be the judge. Many of those cars were and are still being raced and have been changed again to comply with the rules in SCCA, IMSA, VARA or SVRA or Historic Nascar.

There was an AUDI (actually auto union) that was pulled from an auction a few years ago because it could not be verified as a particular car. It was a car that had raced but Auto Union would take the cars back to the factory and tear the cars down after each race. They were racing them and didn't care if the same parts went back onto the same car. There was no way to tell if the car that was being sold had the same engine, frame and body shell as was being claimed for a particular race. Auto union had kept no records of serial numbers, vins etc. As a result it was withdrawn from the auction and later sold to a private collector who didn't care about the actual provenance of the car. All of the pieces had been raced by auto union just not necessarily on that car.

End of Rant and my .02 cents worth

Ventura Alfa

[waaytoomuchintothis]

VA, I don't think anybody ever thought race cars don't change after they saw one race, bashing and thrashing around with other cars. I just wish I could find a way to mimic tire rubs. I never have been able to do that with any success. I still have a Titus Mustang that is near perfect everywhere but the gloppy mess I made on the side. It looks nothing like what I tried to do, looking at photos of the car after a race. I've tried it before other ways, and I still can't get it right.

[Ember]

I'm happy enough if they get the 'spirit' of the car right. The over all vibe. But I do get a little miffed when a right hand drive car is released as left, or one of the rare female drivers is portrayed as male (eg, SCX Pat Moss A110 Alpine). It doesn't stop me from buying the car, but it saddens me a little each time I look at it.

In that line, I must give Carrera and Fly kudos for releasing cars driven by female figures. Although Carrera's Babs the buxom bottle blonde is a little over the top.

[TsgtRet]

I think my preference could be defined as "accurate to the era". If a certain model car was campaigned in 50s road racing then a representative example is fine. There ar some extremes I won't go to....the Ninco Panamericana Vette and the 2 recent Scaley "NASCAR" Chargers come to mind, but in general if there are minor "errors" on a car I'll either change them or live with it, as is. The bottom line is whatever makes you happy in this hobby is correct way to do it :banana-dance:

[JULES]

Historical accuracy vs. cost per unit will definitely have a bearing on whether a slot car can be modelled to near perfection.

A decision to add a small part or feature to a model does not start and end with the part/feature that you see on the final product. It needs to be known about in the first instance, then researched, talked about, designed, tooled, tested and discussed again. In the corporate world, properly costed, this can add many 1000’s of $’s to the project.

Very often, a model like the GT40 will have a family of injection molding tools specific to that model. If, at the start of the design project, all the potential incarnations of a model were designed into the tooling then it may be possible to include that certain feature or part into the tooling right from the start. The initial cost of cutting steel to form a particular shape of door mirror, air intake, hood style etc., can be ‘lost’ across the main cost for the tool. Having to retrospectively add in a part to a tool can add very heavy $ implications and may simply be unachievable.

In addition most, if not all, slot car makers must ‘fudge’ some aspects of a model to make it perform on a track. The model will be ‘squashed’, widened, stretched, manipulated and over-tired just enough to get to the point where it will not disappoint on track. At Pioneer we call this ‘Slot Car License’ (SCL). This is the area in which things are done to a model for the benefit of a car’s performance.

You only have to turn a slot car over to realize that the ‘model’ is only a fairly accurate representation of the actual car from the rocker panel upwards. Of course, apart from a wheel on each corner, the rest of the chassis and underpan bear no resemblance whatsoever to a ‘racing car’.

At the moment, we are just checking to see if Bo and Luke both had button down breast pockets on their shirts all of the time, some of the time or never. It will be important to someone, we think.

Jules

[Dangermouse]

thanks Jules for the comments - can't say I ever looked at Bo and Luke when I watched the DoH
so it don't bother me if they have em or not.....

:)

[HomeRacingWorld]

I like the balance/spirit comments. That is what I personally look for. It does not have to be perfect, but a good attempt.