Is it My Imagination?

[Horrorshow]

Seems like the AMT Christine kit’s roof is too low. I measured both pictures, I know angles are different ect., and it definitely looks lower. Curious what others think.

[Rob Hall]

That kit has some proportion issues with the roof and rear quarters.  I recall lots of discussion here when it was first released 20+ years ago. 

[dino246gt]

It sure looks cool in your mock-up though!

 

[Matt Bacon]

I think to really be able to tell you need to put a block of black foam to fill the glasshouse, and stand well back and zoom in with the camera. As it is, the line of the nearside window is hard to see because of the “view through” of the far side. Standing further away will reduce the fish-eye distortion of the camera lens and give you something more directly comparable with the real car picture.

best,

M.

[Ulf]

My tip is to hold a piece of paper inside the body and draw the outline of the opening, cut it out, and place it on the iPhone screen. You should get an idea of whether the proportions are correct. Pictures are difficult; few are accurate representations, and many product images are manipulated.

[Ace-Garageguy]

I can tell you one thing right off.

The line over the side glass is way wrong.

Look at the real car shot; the line is straight, almost dead parallel with the line at the top of the doorskin.

On the model, that line over the door glass starts sloping down almost immediately.

The discrepancy is not a camera or lens artifact.

It's just wrong.

There are other issues, but that one jumps out and does indeed make the roof look too low...though it may actually be too low even at the front.

[mikos]

It looks too low due to the slope of the side windows like Bill mentioned.  If you straighten that section out, may need to add/spice in a new drip rail section in that area, it would look closer to the real car.  It’s correctable with a little work.

[Justin Porter]

A fun experiment goes like this. According to How Stuff Works, a 1958 Plymouth stands 53.5" tall. If we convert that to measurements that dial calipers like, that's 1359mm. Divided by 25 that gives us a scale height of 54.36mm. If we take Horrorshow's side profile picture and play around with resizing percentages until it prints at a height of 54.36 we get a 1/25th scale side profile of a real 1958 Plymouth. We then can take a measurement of the side window aperture at the place where it looks the worst to my eye and on the real Plymouth it measures out at 12.53mm. 

Now all we need is someone with dial calipers and an AMT Belvedere to check their own findings. I will also grant this is just rough calculations based on 10 minutes of Google and playing with my printer.

[Can-Con]

This has been discussed to death here in the past.

Yes, the roof is too low,

yes, the side trim isn't strait

and yes, the engine has the wrong intake for the serise engine.

[mikos]

3 hours ago, Justin Porter said:

A fun experiment goes like this. According to How Stuff Works, a 1958 Plymouth stands 53.5" tall. If we convert that to measurements that dial calipers like, that's 1359mm. Divided by 25 that gives us a scale height of 54.36mm. If we take Horrorshow's side profile picture and play around with resizing percentages until it prints at a height of 54.36 we get a 1/25th scale side profile of a real 1958 Plymouth. We then can take a measurement of the side window aperture at the place where it looks the worst to my eye and on the real Plymouth it measures out at 12.53mm. 

Now all we need is someone with dial calipers and an AMT Belvedere to check their own findings. I will also grant this is just rough calculations based on 10 minutes of Google and playing with my printer.

I think the best way is to measure the actual car.  May have to go to a classic car show, or maybe call up a buddy that has one, but that’s probably the most accurate way IMO.   

[Mark C.]

I don’t think overall height would be the best measurement to use, given the potential variables of tire size and spring height (due to wear or other reasons).  IMHO it would be better to use measurements that don’t have the potential to change, like door to roof, etc.

That said, as Steve mentioned, it’s been discussed many times.  Personally, I’m just happy that we got a ‘58 Belvedere kit.

[Justin Porter]

5 minutes ago, mikos said:

I think the best way is to measure the actual car.  May have to go to a classic car show, or maybe call up a buddy that has one, but that’s probably the most accurate way IMO.   

A full size example isn't always available to be measured or scanned. Combining research materials and extrapolating through proportion and known measured points is the routine by which military kits are accurately produced especially when it comes to ships.

Funniest thing is that the method I just used - scaling photographs from a prototype and reverse engineering measurements - is actually how Aurora got their Jaguar E-Type kits to market first by photographing show cars well before other kit manufacturers had full blueprints.

[mikos]

1 hour ago, Justin Porter said:

A full size example isn't always available to be measured or scanned. Combining research materials and extrapolating through proportion and known measured points is the routine by which military kits are accurately produced especially when it comes to ships.

Funniest thing is that the method I just used - scaling photographs from a prototype and reverse engineering measurements - is actually how Aurora got their Jaguar E-Type kits to market first by photographing show cars well before other kit manufacturers had full blueprints.

Well, with how bad Revell screwed up the front windshield height on the new tool XKE, you may have a point about measuring off photographs for good results. lol!  A little massaging on the upper window line on that ‘58 Plymouth would make it look a lot better.  The slightly low roofline won’t be as noticeable as the short windshield on the XKE they did recently.