The human memory is an amazing faculty – an incredible storeroom of extraordinary events surrounding the senses that we experience throughout our lifetime. What we see, hear, touch, smell and feel at key moments in our past can be called up, generally in an instant, and replayed in our mind’s eye, leaving our powers of description to create an image that others can share. As car enthusiasts we can conjure up all manner of incidents and occasions that have stirred and inspired our automotive souls. But as much as memory is a wondrous thing, so too is our imagination, that ability to create pictures or scenes that represent fact or fantasy. Trouble is, too few of us can adequately convert that picture into “reality”, but not so for Carl Bosman. His “dioramic” mind is stimulated to create 3D “images” that can be kept for posterity – all in 1:18 scale.
It all started 17 years ago for Standard Bank disposals manager Carl when out of the blue a colleague asked him to make a display scene for a favourite toy train that he owned. Carl took up the challenge to create his first diorama – models and figures seen against a three-dimensional background – and in the process became hooked on the concept. But being a car fanatic he decided he would far rather concentrate his new-found talent on creating dioramas for some of his collection of 1:18 scale models. Since then he has built over 100, most of which have been passed on, but many still occupy wall space in his small home workshop and office, including one in particular that caught my eye at a toy fair at the George Old Car Show a few years back – a scene depicting the famous car chase from the movie Bullitt…
Looking at a “freeze frame” of Steve McQueen’s (aka Frank Bullitt) Highland Green Ford Mustang GT airborne as it leaps off the crest of a downhill San Francisco street with the horn-rim bespectacled Bill Hickman’s (the “baddy” driver) black Dodge Charger 440 Magnum trying to shake off his pursuer drew my attention immediately. With a Beetle and a Chev Bel Air parked outside houses as the backdrop, it captures the spirit of the chase so well that a photo of the diorama is permanently posted on the official Bullitt website.
But not all of Carl’s scenes are “takes” from movies and suchlike. “I just get ideas, think them through, then set to work,” he says modestly. “Sometimes I start with a model, like a damaged BMW I was given that, rather than rebuild, I decided to wreck further and create a crash scene. Other times I will think of a scene then scout around for models to suit. It’s all ‘off the cuff’ stuff. I don’t do layout sketches or suchlike, just make it up as I go along, adapting details where necessary but without deviating too much from the original picture in my mind.” Carl doesn’t set time frames to building his scale masterpieces. “Depending on size and complexity, they take as long as they take, and if I’m not in the mood then I don’t touch them: it’s a recipe for disaster!”
It is the detail that makes Carl’s dioramas so fascinating. You can look at each one for ages and still miss out a detail or two: the realism is exceptional. From rusting wrecks in a shack through a Route 66 filling station where a Mustang owner chats with a posse of bikers, to what is possibly one of Carl’s most outstanding efforts, a night-time meeting of (Happy Days) The Fonz with the “fuzz” at Andy’s Drive-in, complete with roller-skated waitresses. You look and cannot help but “feel” what is happening at that “moment in time”. On the lighter side, Lenny’s Love Shack is a barbeque/camp site scene that simply bristles with items and “activity” that puts an instant smile on the viewer’s face.
Of course, workshops are an ideal setting for cars and Carl has done a lot of them, from fettling a Porsche 911 to a mega service centre featuring no less than a Willys Gasser, ’57 Ford, Dodge Demon, Plymouth Cuda and a Dodge Charger. In the background if you could play a soundtrack of chattering air-guns, a blipping Hemi and the Beach Boys Little Deuce Coupe then spray about some oil and paint thinner fumes, this could be the REAL THING…
Rather than being left in a showcase, putting a number of models together in a simple scene is far more effective: Carl’s trio of Aussie Touring Cars depicted on a section of the famous Bathurst circuit is a prize example, as is a pair of bikes in an Isle of Man TT setting. The latter actually demonstrates the fun of creating dioramas. The bikes are MotoGP machines that do not race in the TT, but just imagine if they did…
Not all of the dioramas are in 1:18 scale. There is a WRC scene in 1:43 scale featuring a Subaru Impreza going sideways through a cliff-side bend above a Ford Focus that has gone off the road and landed in water, both under the watchful eye of a helicopter.
Some of the scenes portray the good and bad sides of life. Apart from the medics attending to the driver of the crashed BMW, there is an illicit gun deal taking place from the boot of a Pontiac Satellite on a low-light street corner, which is in stark contrast to the humour of a buxom lass and a braaivleis taking precedence over a speeding Team Surtees Lola T70 passing by. It is these unusual settings that are a credit to Carl’s imagination and help to make his work so appealing.
Check the detailed images and be transported into a model world…