How You Can Get Almost Any Car In The World Turned Into A Collectible Scale Model

One of the most fun things to do after buying a car that you love is seeing if you can find a tiny version of it that you can put on your desk or dresser. It’s especially awesome if you can find a diecast or resin version of your favorite car that’s the exact spec and color that you have. But what if you own a car that’s so obscure that nobody has made a model of it? As it turns out, there are skilled creators out there who can more or less create a scale model of pretty much any car on the planet from scratch.

I’ve fallen deeply in love with my little 1997 Honda Life T-Type. Admittedly, I am a bit surprised by this. A Honda Life was never a dream car. I drove one at an Autopian reader meetup and liked it enough that I thought I’d import my own to play around with for a while and then maybe sell later. Instead, my little car has gone into my secret mini warehouse of my favorite cars. I’ve polished my little car’s paint, fixed its bad bearings, and given it brand-new tires!

Not long after importing the little guy, I found myself wanting to get a scale model of the car. I thought it would be so cool to have a tiny version of my tiny car to take to car shows and to display in my Hot Wheels dioramas. I figured that finding a Honda Life model in the United States would have been hard, but surely, there had to be some in Japan. I mean, the Honda Life was a popular model!

I searched the Japanese web pretty extensively and came up largely empty-handed. I found models for later generations of the Honda Life, but none for my second-generation car, which was sold from 1997 through the middle of 1998. Maybe I’m just looking for a model car that doesn’t exist anymore because it’s so old. Or, maybe, even though I set my browser location to Japan and my language to Japanese, I still just couldn’t find the model? Perhaps a model just doesn’t exist for the 1997 Honda Life since it was such a short-lived model.

The closest thing I was able to find was a plastic kit body to mount onto a 4×4 RC car. I had no interest in building and painting a kit, and I had even less interest in finding a chassis to mount it to.

So, what do you do? I searched everywhere for a Hot Wheels or Matchbox version of the Honda Life, but came up empty. Then, I searched the web for “custom Hot Wheels car.” At first, I got excited because there are lots of people online who are more than willing to make you a custom Hot Wheels. The catch is that the car has to already exist in diecast form. So, scratch that.

That’s when I found something interesting. On creator sites like Etsy, there are folks who make a 3D model of your car, and then print it out on a 3D printer. There appear to be four different ways to do this. One creator, 2ScaleReplicas seems to print out cars, and then “paints” them using the photos that you have provided.

These cars are “photorealistic,” so to speak, which I love. What I don’t love is the fact that all of these models have a sort of ghostly appearance to them, which appears to be an artifact of the printing process. I was willing to accept this, but at the time, the creator charged $275 for the smallest model. The pricing has since gone down, but at the time, I thought the price was a little more than I wanted to pay.

The second type of 3D printed model car that I’ve found, by creator vntj3D, involved printing out the car, painting it by hand, and then covering it in clear resin.

I liked the look of this a lot more than the method I noted above. But then, I noticed that the creator of these models didn’t separate the wheels from the rest of the model when coating it in resin. This is fine! I’m not complaining, but it’s not my style.

A third type that I’ve found, by MakingYourMinis involves a creator 3D printing a car or making a car out of resin. These models look to be pretty high quality and even have clear windows, which I love so much.

But the proportions of these cars are slightly exaggerated. Again, I’m not trying to bash the creator here. I mean, Hot Wheels cars are like that, too! But I was looking for something more exact.

Then I found one more creator, Manuel C, who lives in Italy and goes by Manu3DDD. He 3D prints cars like the other creators do, but I noticed that his models have separate wheels and separate tires. He then hand-paints each car.

Sure, this means that your car won’t be as perfect as one made by a model company in a factory, but it does mean that your model car has a one-of-a-kind, handmade look, which I adore.

I sat on this idea for a while, debating with myself over which one to get. Each method had its pluses and minuses, and none of them had the result of giving me a model car as if I might have purchased one from AutoArt, Minichamps, Norev, or similar. Ultimately, I went with Manuel, and I’m happy that I did.

How Manuel makes his cars is pretty neat. I sent him photos of every angle of my Honda Life. He then recreated the car in 3D software and printed it out.

What’s interesting is that he didn’t just print the car out in a single shot. A lot of the parts were printed separately, including axles, wheels, tires, windows, the grille, and the roof rack. Manuel then assembled the car and painted it by hand. The whole process took a couple of weeks from start to finish. Then, it was shipped from Italy to my home here in Illinois. Everything went smoothly until it arrived at my local post office. Then, the package got lost for a week or two before a postal carrier found it. Whew.

My little car is what I’d best describe as uniquely cute. Can you see that it is 3D printed? Sure. You can also clearly see that it was painted by hand. Some of the separate parts also weren’t glued in place perfectly straight. But in a weird way, I adore that. This car has a hand-made look because, despite having initially been 3D printed, it really is hand-made!

I love the little details, too, like the 3D headlights and the fact that Manuel even managed to stick a very tiny Honda badge on the hood. The mirrors are silver, and the roof rack looks great. Also cool to me is how the tires have tread marks and how the wheels and tires were printed as separate units.

Flip the car over, and the interesting details continue. The car has a cute exhaust pipe, and Manuel printed out his business name, Manu3DDD, on the underbody. I got this whole 1/32 scale car for $220, which included shipping and import duties. Yeah, that’s a lot of money, and honestly, the most I’ve ever spent on a single model car, but I’m happy.

What I’m most stoked about is just the fact that, thanks to the awesome technology of 3D printing, almost anything is possible. Now, there’s no need to be disappointed when you cannot find a model of your car – you can just have one printed! I’m sure I haven’t even broken through the surface of custom-made model cars yet. If you know of another way to get a completely custom model car made, I want to know! I have more cars and motorcycles I’d love to get models made for.