[Closed] Something I have wondered about for quite awhile.....

That, along with a number of other observations are issues I've noted as criticisms.

Here's my theory...

...my theory is that people always wonder this without actually measuring the wheels. They just stare, and don't measure. That's why they never know that all of them are scale replicas to 18" wheels and ALL measure exactly .75" across the center. .75X24=18. Pretty easy to measure and very unfortunate to wallow in this mystery for very long as well.

But on the bright side the reason why this happens is because there are much more important things for us to do on a daily basis. 🙂

Randy-

Gee whiz man! I was merely stating what strikes me on a regular basis. On FM C5s, to me the wheels just don't look correct. That's it! Simple as that! I basically was wondering if that struck others as well as myself.
It's not that I don't like them 'cause I do. A few of the FM C5s are of my favorites!
I don't enter into the technicalities of measuring wheels as I couldn't do anything about it anyway.

They looked a little small to me too but.......

Phil - My feelings exactly !!!

Got it, but what else is there to do? Just gotta measure it and know.

I remember during a "The Car Room" episode, Joe Kelly explained that model car tires and wheels...

... are scaled to be LARGER than the 1:1 counterpart. Consequently, if you measure the wheel/tire combo they will actually be larger on the model than in 1:1. The reason why is because visually, your mind plays tricks on you and if the model cars wheel/tire combo was precisely to scale, they would look too small. To compensate for the visual illusion, the model makers create the wheel/tire combo to be slight larger. I'm wondering in the case of FM, that is what they've done and used actual to scale wheel/tires.

I've never had these mind trick problems before...

but I agree it exists... I've known those who have....and I have measured a LOT of models for fellow collectors in all scales, and have not yet found one to be more than a micro-millimeter off.

I've seen scale model diorama artists used "forced perspective" out of convenience...curious which models "Joe Kelly" was referring to.

Hi, Randy (and guys) - I got that info from a couple of sources, most notably Mark Bentley from...

... Ford's licensing arm, who works with companies like Greenlight, AutoART, and several others. He and Patrick Mulligan (former editor of Scale Auto magazine) explained it as part of "finessing" a model car: your eye sees things differently when focused on a real car; the depth of field of your vision : distance to the object observed : relationship between points on that object is radically different when we look at something that's been "miniaturized". In 1:43 and 1:64 (or any of the smaller scales), the effect is not so great. In 1:24 or larger, it becomes more pronounced. The wheels have to be made a couple of ticks larger than absolute scale in order to look "correct".

It might vary from release to release (as does the degree of "tick,", LOL), but that's the way it was explained to me. Raffi Minasian also touched on "finessing" in an article for one of the scale mags a while back. Marshall Buck also showed me the difference when something is absolutely scaled, compared to finessed. There can be quite a difference.

Hope that helps!

All the Best,

Joe

I'd rather let my eyes adjust than have a model that is not to correct scale.

I think I agree Randy! lol

This ended up being quite a conversation! And

I appreciate all the input and different takes on the subject.

Very cool guys!! Thank you each and every one!!