Vehicle Size for Gangsters?

[Murphy]

Looking at getting some of the LLedo "Days Gone" vehicles to populate the streets of my city.
They are in 1/43rd scale/size.
Is this a compatible/workable scale/size for 28mm figures?

Thanks in advance.

Murphy

[Michi]

Many gamers consider 1/43rd scale appropriate, but I prefer 1/64th scale for vehicles.



It's harder to move around a huge obstacle with limited movement ranges for miniatures, therefore smaller vehicles are preferable - they'll provide cover anyway.
Smaller vehicles match rather smallish tabletop buildings better too.
Some of the Lledo lorries do match 1/64th scale however, I find. I think they are more "fit to blister" than properly scaled to each other:

[NickNascati]

Murph,
           I’ve been using the Dimestore Dreams vehicles. They are about 1/43rd and look perfect to my eye.

[mikedemana]

I prefer 1:43 because the size of today's minis with scale creep and all seems to pass the "eyeball test" better for me.



From one of my Mean Streets gang warfare games...

Mike Demana

[CapnJim]

I use a variety of scales for my vehicles, in each of the eras I game that include vehicles - 1/43, 1/48, 1/50. 1/56...I use what i think "looks right"...

[Cat]

For 28mm Bolt Action, I use mostly 1/56 kits, but for civilian vehicles I was able to find a number of 1/50 diecast ones that blend in well enough to use with the Resistance.
 
For 25mm (mostly) Mean Streets (with some 28s and even a few furshlugginer scale creepy 30s) I use 1/64.  1/64 is sweet for having a wide array of 1960s–70s vehicles for my time period; gangster period may be trickier, but I haven't gone looking for those.  I do have a couple of 1/64 late 1930s beer trucks that still look fine decades later.
 
1/64 can take advantage of narrower streets for table layout.  Two travel lanes, plus parking on one or both sides gets pretty wide, even when scrunching the clearance space between lanes to a minimum eyeball distance.  Add in sidewalks wide enough to hold one or two figure bases, and it still gets tricky working in blocks of buildings.  1/43 streets get gigantic wide.
 
Photo of 1/50 diecasts.  My 1/64 are all on the workbench now getting disassembled and detail painted.

[joekano]

If it’s helpful, I bought several of the Days Gone vehicles for my VBCW and BoB projects. I took a bunch of photos of the them with figures and a size grid. They are on my blog https://majorthomasfoolery.blogspot.com/search/label/Diecast?

The vehicles are more of a what fits in the box (which has also changed sizes over the years) rather than a specific scale, so some look better than others.

Chris

[Triarii]

If it looks right, use it. The Leidos vehicles for example seem to have been made to a standard box size so do vary in scale.

[Daeothar]

If it looks right, use it.

This!

I try to find and use 1/50 or 1/48 vehicles as much as possible, since I try to make my terrain to the same scale (1/50). However, I have found that 1/43 scale vehicles work really well with 28mm heroic miniatures.

Because all of your miniatures are based, they have some added hight. Add to that the usually exaggerated proportions of heroically scaled miniatures, and all of a sudden cars that would on paper be way too big, fit right in.

Alternatively, you could base your 1/56 vehicles to match your miniatures. But I must admit that this has never really looked right to me, as the vehicles tend to look ever so slightly too small. Maybe that's due to the heroic proportions of the minis?

[Andy in Germany]

Another facor is that many vehicles have gradually become larger over time, so our ideas of what is a 'normal' vehicle reflects the vehicles we see every day. What with this and the loose scales of many figures I think you can afford to be fairly relaxed. Personally I notice colours and weathering more than scale in vehicles for tabletop games.

[dgrosso]

I use 1/64 diecast for most games, other than WW2. The vehicles may look small compared to figures, but they seem to look okay as far as I'm concerned. 1/48 or 1/43 look too big and take up too much space. Not only that but the larger models are more expensive. I also mix vehicle dates from 1910 to 1936 as there would have been older cars with the newer cars.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

I use 1/56 for WW2 etc because of the availability of models, but 1/48 - 50 for later, partly because of the available models but also because of the larger figures for "28mm" moderns.


1/56 Company B VW 82E;  1/48 Tamiya VW 82E and a 1/43 die cast VW Beetle.

[dgrosso]

I just started my pulp/gangster/cthulhu project vehicle collection. I like the way 1/64 looks with 28mm figs, as they are not what the focus of the game centers on, unlike WW2 tanks for example. Tanks should look big and scary! My buddy James McEwan (Headshot Z) has a HUGE collection of 1/64 diecast vehicles for his zombie games. Let me tell you, a parking lot full of 1/64 vehicles looks really good! They really do look like terrain in situ on the table! Funny thing though, minivans seem to be hard to find! I use Matchbox, Lesney, Hot Wheels, and whatever else I can nab! We need more 28mm motorcycles and riders!

[FramFramson]

I nominally prefer 1/56th, but I've used all sorts of vehicles which fit in with this ostensibly. The criteria I use has always been consistent though: For regular cars, a character (a large mix but using Copplestone as a baseline for scale, and which I base on coins) must look like they could semi-plausibly sit inside (something the Lledo or other 1/64 cars sometimes have difficulty with), and they must also plausibly look like they could use the hood/bonnet of the car as partial or low cover (so, lower than head height). Large trucks need not meet the second rule of course, but must fit in with the cars.

I had a fair bit of success fishing around in the various well-known series of "box scale" cars, as well as looking up 1/43 or 1/48 models of cars which were very small, and thus look "normal" in the context of my characters.

Here's an old pic of my motor pool:

[carlos marighela]

The honest truth is that like figure manufacturers, the makers of toy cars are not necessarily that particular about scale adherence. Plenty of model cars out there proclaim a scale of X but are bigger/smaller by a factor of Y. The only real benchmark is the Mark 1 eyeball and does it look right. As most gamers like to pose their figures firing over car bonnets, matching up a figure against the bonnet is probably your best visual clue.

By the by, whilst the popularity of SUV type cars in recent years has skewed things somewhat I would challenge the notion that cars have got bigger, at least in relative terms to the people that drive them. More efficient engines have meant generally lower hoods than their predecessors. SUV's not withstanding, the average family sedan in this country is notably smaller than it was 20-30 years ago. You also need to factor in that the average human is generally taller than the 1920s/30s version.