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Concept
Model car
Summary
A model car, or toy car, is a miniature representation of an automobile. Other miniature motor vehicles, such as trucks, buses, or even ATVs, etc. are often included in this general category. Because many miniature vehicles were originally aimed at children as playthings, there is no precise difference between a model car and a toy car, yet the word 'model' implies either assembly required or the accurate rendering of an actual vehicle at smaller scale. The kit building hobby became popular through the 1950s, while the collecting of miniatures by adults started to pick up momentum around 1970. Precision-detailed miniatures made specifically for adults are a significant part of the market since the mid-1980s.
The scope of the vehicles involved in the hobby, according to Louis Heilbroner Hertz author of The Complete Book of Building and Collecting Model Automobiles, encompasses "ordinary or stock automobiles, racing cars ([...]), buses, trucks, specialized service vehicles (especially fire engines), military vehicles, including such equipment as self-propelled gun carriers and mobile rocket launchers; construction equipment, including bulldozers and road rollers, tractors and related farm equipment; mobile showmen's engines, customized automobiles, hot rods, dragsters, the recently popular so-called 'funny cars', early self-propelled road carriages, and so on".
Miniature models of automobiles first appeared in Europe around the time real automobiles did. Then, shortly after, they appeared in the United States. These were toys and replicas often made of lead and brass. Later models made in the early 20th century were slush cast plaster or iron. Tin and pressed steel cars, trucks, and military vehicles, like those made by Bing of Germany, were introduced in the 1920s through the 1940s, but period models rarely copied actual vehicles, likely because of the crudeness of early casting and metal shaping techniques. Casting vehicles in alloys such as zinc-aluminum-magnesium-copper (trademarked as zamak) became popular in the late 1930s and remained prominent after World War II.
Official source
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