At the beginning of the 20th century, very few people had any knowledge of how or even why automobiles worked. The German Chauffer School, founded in 1904, was created to deal with this problem. Part of the driver’s training was to gain not only an understanding of how to drive, professional etiquette, and road rules, but also to acquire a practical knowledge of the mechanical systems of automobiles.In 1934, Emil Hohm, an Opel dealer in central Germany, and Werner Degener, a driving instruction-manual publisher, recognized the need for an instructional model (modelle) which was portable and could easily demonstrate the mechanical and operation functions of the automobile. A true-to-scale model of an Opel Admiral was produced and shown at the 1939 Automobile Exhibition in Berlin.The model on display is a “late” model- a Kapitan Pale rather than an Opel. While the 1950s saw a huge increase in the use of plastics, there are still many specially-cast parts present, such as the gril...