1960 Plymouth Valiant

[markcrowel]

I want to go through my whole planning and building process, to show how I redefine the design of a car that has a rather complex shape. A web search for the 1960 Plymouth Valiant will lead to photos the real car's appearance.

I start by making a raw drawing of the car, using pictures of the real car as references. I need to get the proportions right. I want a scale of 1/2 inch to the foot, so with a circle gauge, I draw a one inch diameter circle for the wheel, and draw the rest of the car's profile in size relative to that circle.

The raw drawing is where I can make corrections as needed.

For the front and rear views, I take a strip of paper and make tick marks from the front and rear ends of the side view, to mark where end features (bumpers, lights, grille) will be drawn.

Shown are the raw drawing and drafting tools.

[markcrowel]

Those who have seen my cars probably wonder why the sides are so fat.
Most cars' bodies can be dissected into a center section and side sections. To avoid being frustrated by hard-to-figure and hard-to-form shapes, I represent the center and sides as profile-shaped, parallel-sided boxes.

When I look at a car from the ends, I imagine vertical lines coming down from the edges of the roof straight to the ground, slicing the car into clearly defined sections. This is an over-simplification of the car's shape, as most cars have sides that blend with their centers, but, by the simplest definition, the car's center section sits between the side sections, so in the basic relation of the car's components to each other, it works. Somewhere on a very old thread in this forum, is a Studebaker Avanti that shows this principle.

Here is an illustration of how I simplify and redefine an average car's shape.

[Yale]

We had a '60 Valiant! It was the car in which I learned to drive, so I'll follow this project with great interest.

(One of our earlier cars was a 1952 Henry J., and its curves might be an even greater modeling challenge.)

[Vinalssergio155]

Excellent project !! I have free memories of this car, here in Argentina there were many because it was manufactured in the country.

[Vermin_King]

Well, I thought I could quote your Avanti post, but Attachments didn't come over. Sorry to have cluttered your thread

Originally Posted by markcrowel

It will be covered with colored paper and cardstock. It will look like this car, the body of which is also corrugated cardboard, but the color will be turqouise instead of black.

[markcrowel]

Not at all, Vermin King. Glad you checked in. I'll see if I can scan some of my old Avanti model pics. I just recently moved to a new apartment, and am still unpacking and looking for stuff.

[markcrowel]

After the raw drawing, comes the tracing, on tracing paper over the raw drawing, whereupon the refinements are made. To get both sides of the profile to match, I flip the tracing over, and directly trace over it on the opposite side of the tracing paper. I do likewise with the end views, folding them over and tracing over them. When they are unfolded, you have full end views.

To keep the tracing paper from sliding around during the tracing, I tape it to the raw drawing. My front view looks a little sloppy, because I didn't allow enough paper at the edge of the sheet for a full fold-over, so I had to tape another piece of tracing paper to the front view half. As I said, warts and all! I can redraw that later.

[markcrowel]

Yale: I'd like to do a Henry J, factory stock. Revell produced a plastic kit of it, but in gasser form only.

Vinalssergio155: It was a good car.

[Moritzamica]

If you need a blueprint of this car, you can find it here:


Plymouth Valiant (1960) | SMCars.Net - Car Blueprints Forum

[markcrowel]

Moritzamica, thanks for the link, those are beautiful plan drawings of that car!

Meanwhile, I found some of my old photos of two Studebaker Avanti models that I built, showing the three box method that I use. When I first tried this on an Avanti, I wasn't sure it would work, because of the way the real car's sides blend into the center section. The first Avanti I built was just a single parallel-sided, profile-shaped box - no character at all. So, with nothing to lose, I tried it with the three box method, and to my surprise, it worked. I wouldn't have thought so, but it did.