Autorama but smaller: Tiny car contest at full-size hot rod show is all about details
It's as if someone took a shrink ray to the Detroit Autorama.
No, the event itself wasn't small. Huntington Place was packed as usual for the Autorama's 72nd year in Detroit on Saturday, with hundreds of custom cars and hot rods under the lights at Huntington Place.
But at one booth, dozens of meticulously crafted model cars — shrunken to 1/25 scale — sat for keen eyes and critical judges. Since 1991, model car collectors have submitted their finest work to the Autorama Model Car Contest to compete in various categories: tiny lowriders, hot rods and slot cars (to name a few) line the foldout tables at the booth.
Ask any of the crafters sitting around the table: These are not toys. The model cars are crafts of careful attention and time. They're the centerpiece of a tight-knit community — founded on passions that began in childhood.
Steve Perry, a retired automotive engineer, sat at the back of the booth between two professional photography lights, snapping photos of the tiny cars on a pristine white backdrop.
It's all about the details for Perry, who makes his own model cars and sinks hundreds of hours into each build.
Perry conducts intense research and writes accompanying information manuals for each car he makes. In his model of a 1987 El Camino, Perry equipped the engine bay with an air conditioning compressor on brackets with refrigerant lines routed exactly where they need to go. Thin red fibers and small custom-made pieces mimic the electrical wiring of real engines.
Perry used to design air conditioners at Valio. "It doesn't blow cold air, but it sure looks like it would," he said.
Perry is a seven-time best-in-show winner at the Autorama contest, and he said the model car community is built on this attention to detail. Like any other art form, crafting a replica of your favorite car is a hard-earned labor of love.
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"The subjects I build are meaningful to me," Perry said. "We all just appreciate that we're car guys. Everyone's kind of doing their own thing with the models. Some might be really into good paint jobs. Some guys are into detail."
And Perry, who once spent almost two years on a single build, is into the details.
So is Rick Radecke, a 65-year-old car part delivery driver from Eastpointe, who has helped run the contest since 1991. Picking the winners in each category is almost a science, he said.
"We look at the quality of the build. It's got to be put together correctly without any visible flaws," Radecke said. "No glue showing, the tires gotta be on straight, nothing falling off of it. The detail here is amazing."
As the years go on, so does the median age of hobbyists in the community.
"The group is a fairly tight fraternity. I mean, we welcome anyone, but most of us started when we were young, and that's a long time ago for most of us," Perry, 65, said with a laugh. "It's an aging hobby. It's a lot of older people who do it, and we just relate to each other."
Radecke said when he was a kid, he could put together a model car for less than $10. Nowadays, a simple build can cost $40 or $50 — never mind the custom features like air conditioning brackets. With prohibitive costs and interest stolen by things like video games, Radecke said the hobby is sputtering out.
At the Autorama contest, though, youngsters compete in a "junior" category to encourage participation. (And what 13-year-old can keep up with a former engineer like Perry, who's using rare earth neodymium magnets to make sure the doors "sound right" when they close?)
To Perry, the hobby may be dying out — but his passion for it is flourishing.
"In a way, it's a dying hobby," Perry said. "But the state of the art has never been higher."
Contact Liam Rappleye: LRappleye@freepress.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Autorama Model Car Contest is all about community, attention to detail
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