Off the Shelf: Simon Elford’s Life of Bits and Pieces

Long before Simon Elford was directing Brooklin Models and Scale Model Technical Services (SMTS), he was a teenager with a paper route, a part-time job in a sweet shop, and just enough money at the end of the week to buy one more model kit.

His first was a Tamiya 1:24 Porsche 959. And that box of bits and pieces opened more than a hobby. It opened a way of thinking.

Simon had always loved cars. As a boy, he was drawn to the bold, angular supercars of the 1980s, the strange and dramatic wedges that still capture his imagination today. But it wasn’t just the look of a car that hooked him. It was the challenge of making something with his own hands. He would earn his money, head to the local model shop, buy a kit and some glue, and get to work. By his own admission, those early efforts were rough. He laughs now at how amateurish they were. But the spark was already there.

Simon’s path after school did not lead straight into model making. For a time, he trained as a chef and worked under a couple of top-end chefs in Michelin-starred restaurants. He is candid about that period. He says he was never the best chef, and eventually found himself better suited to the front of house, ending up as head waiter at the last place where he worked. Even so, the experience left its mark. The discipline, standards, and attention to detail demanded in those kitchens would echo later in the patience and precision of his work at the bench.

That instinct had deeper roots than he may have realized at the time. Simon’s family was a major influence on him growing up. His father loved cars and tinkering, and his grandfather was an engineer. Home was a place where things were made, repaired, taken apart and understood. Simon remembers Meccano sets, train sets and hours spent building. He also remembers the irresistible urge to dismantle almost anything mechanical just to see how it worked. Radios, household items, even a gas fireplace once ended up in bits and pieces on the floor. Fortunately, he could usually put them back together again.

That combination of curiosity, patience, and mechanical curiosity would define his life.

After moving from Berkshire to Hastings, Simon’s path changed when he met Keith Williams of SMTS. At around 20 years old, he was hired as a model builder. It was the opportunity that turned youthful fascination into a vocation.

He arrived enthusiastic, but not yet polished. The standards at SMTS were high, and many of the builders around him were already highly experienced. Simon knew he had a lot to learn. It took the better part of a year before he felt he was producing work of real quality. What carried him through was persistence. He put in extra hours, absorbed everything he could, and steadily developed the discipline the work demanded.

Model making, he learned quickly, is not for everyone. It requires focus, calm and an uncommon tolerance for detail. Some people may have the technical ability, but not the temperament to sit at a bench for hours chasing tiny improvements. Simon discovered that he did have that temperament handling all the bits and pieces. More than that, he loved the process.

At SMTS, he learned far more than assembly. He was taught every aspect of the business, from casting and fettling to spraying, finishing and building. In the workshop, people wore many hats, and that broad training gave him a deep understanding of how a model comes to life from start to finish. Over time, he became known not just for building, but for pushing detail further. He studied the cars closely and looked for ways to make each piece stronger, sharper and more convincing. He especially embraced the finer points of finishing, including the foiling work that helped define the look of many of the models that passed through his hands.

Road cars were always his particular passion. While SMTS produced many competition subjects, Simon gravitated toward elegant production cars, especially Aston Martins. One of his favorites from those years was the Aston Martin DB4, a model he still recalls with special affection. During that period, SMTS was even building models for Aston Martin itself, with the company’s pieces appearing in the marque’s parts catalog. For a lifelong car enthusiast, that was not just work. It was a point of pride.

Yet even as he found his footing at SMTS, Simon had a strong instinct to build something of his own.

That led him to leave and run his own model shop, Enterprise Models, for three years. It was an existing shop where he had already been working Saturdays, and when the owner decided to sell, Simon took the chance. It was a bold step, and an important one. He got to see the hobby from the retail side, learn the realities of stock, customers and margins, and test himself as a business owner.

In some ways, the timing was against him. The market was shifting quickly. Internet sales were changing buying habits, Chinese-made products were moving in strongly, and competing as a small independent became much harder. Simon was admittedly still relatively inexperienced in running his own business, and after about three years, the shop had to close.

But it was not a failure in the way people often mean it. It was an education. He returned to Keith and SMTS with a wider perspective and a tougher business sense. The experience taught him how to run lean, how to survive pressure, and how to see both the creative and commercial sides of the trade. Those lessons would later matter enormously as the business weathered difficult periods and evolved into the operation he helps lead today.

For Simon, the line between collector and craftsman has always been fluid. He did own models as a young enthusiast, from Bburagos to posters and anything else connected to the cars he loved. But his relationship to models has often been shaped more by making than accumulating. Once he has built a piece and solved the challenge it presents, his attention naturally shifts to the next thing. That helps explain why his own collection is relatively modest today. Where he once had more than 100 models, he now keeps around 20, many of them SMTS pieces, a few Brooklins, and a handful of others that simply speak to his taste.

His taste, unsurprisingly, remains deeply rooted in the 1980s. Modern cars leave him cold. He is drawn instead to the bold, odd, sometimes awkward charisma of earlier decades, with marquees like the Lotus Esprit, DeLorean, Firebird, Trans Am and the kinds of cars that once seemed futuristic in a very analog way. He speaks about them not as abstractions, but as objects with personality. He loves their stories, their shapes and their engineering quirks.

That fascination extends beyond cars. Simon is also an avid camera collector. He cheerfully admits he is not a great photographer, but the cameras themselves captivate him. What appeals to him is the same thing that has always appealed to him in model making and old cars. It’s the design, complexity, ingenuity, and the beauty of mechanisms. He is especially drawn to the cameras of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, objects full of moving parts, clever engineering and tactile charm. Some he restores. Some he repairs and sells. All of them reflect the same restless curiosity that has guided him since childhood.

That restlessness is central to who he is. Simon has never really been someone with only one job, one interest, or one lane. Alongside his work in the model world, he has long been involved in buying and selling, business ventures, and public service. His broader career has included leadership roles in local government, including service as a district councilor, county councilor and Town Mayor in Bexhill. Even there, the pattern is consistently one of engagement, initiative, and a refusal to stand still.

Still, scale models remain the thread that ties it all together.

There is something quietly remarkable about the arc of Simon’s story. The boy buying Tamiya kits with paper-route money became the man trusted to help lead two respected names in the world of hand-built scale models. The teenager taking things apart to understand them became the craftsman who could transform raw castings and components into objects collectors cherish. The young builder who needed a year to feel competent became the model maker whose work can be immediately recognized by its finish and detail.

And yet, for all that experience, he does not tell his story as though it were ever a grand plan. There was no dramatic moment when he decided, “This is my career.” It simply grew, step by step, model by model, opportunity by opportunity, into the shape of a life.

That may be what makes his story feel so genuine. Simon did not chase prestige. He followed interest, workmanship, and instinct. He found something he was good at, something he loved doing, and he kept building from there.

Family remains an important part of that story, too. Today, Simon is kept on his toes by his two daughters and five grandchildren, who bring another kind of energy, activity, and perspective to his life. Just as family helped shape his curiosity and hands-on instincts when he was young, it continues to be a central part of who he is now.

Even now, that impulse remains alive. He talks with enthusiasm about current projects on his bench, including a large-scale DeLorean and a Knight Rider Pontiac Firebird with working electronics and illuminated displays. He is still learning, still experimenting, still pursuing the next challenge. That is perhaps the clearest clue to what drives him. Completion is satisfying, but discovery is better.

(The Knight Rider is the most recent model on his workbench)

For Simon Elford, model making was never only about collecting scale model cars. It was about understanding how things go together, how form and function meet, how detail creates character, and how careful hands can turn parts into something meaningful. It started with a 1:24 Porsche 959 and a tube of glue. It became a trade, a business, a livelihood, and a life.

Not bad for something people once told him was not a real job.