Editing Model car (section)

=== Scale sizes ===

The scales of toy and model cars vary according to historical precedent, market demand and the need for detail. Many 'in house' models of real car companies are made by professional modelers in full size, or at very large scales like 1:4, 1:5, 3:8, or 1:10 to portray adequate features and proportions. For toys, many European pre-war cars and trucks were made to display with railroad layouts, making [[1:87]] (1 to 2 inches, or HO scale) or [[1:43 scale|1:43]] (about 4&nbsp;inches long, or O scale) common scales. Other companies made vehicles in variations around 1:40 to [[1:50 scale|1:50]] scales. Some companies went smaller to appeal to the hands of smaller children (about [[1:64 scale]] or about 3&nbsp;inches), which improved profit margins in packaging more items per carton, and increasing profit per vehicle sold. Others moved to larger scales from 1:43 toward 1:40, 1:38 or [[1:35 scale|1:35]]. Later, popular scales went even larger. In the United States, 1:25 (6 to 7&nbsp;inches) became the staple size for plastic promotional models, while European manufacturers went to 1:24 or [[1:18 scale diecast|1:18]] (about 9&nbsp;inches long). The larger [[1:12 scale]] was occasionally seen and more rarely, 1:10 or [[1:8]]. At the other extreme, some very tiny toys since the 1980s were fairly accurate down to about [[1:120]] (a little over an inch).
[[File:Size reference.jpg|thumb|Models from Spark, 6 different scales ]]