A few years ago, I was part of the judging team at a model car contest in a distant city (name on both withheld to "protect the innocent"...) . I was one of the judges who was tasked with finding candidates for the 'Best Engine' award. I thought that the engine in a puller truck built by a friend/fellow club member was good enough. Tunnel-rammed Boss 429, race headers, dual carbs, nicely detailed...the whole nine yards. His being a friend played no part of it. The engine in that model was great, no matter who built it.

I suggested that engine for consideration, but the other Best Engine judge went off on that engine (or me, for suggesting it, now that I thought about it again...). He claimed the SPARK WIRE LAYOUT was incorrect for that engine, given that he is a FORD CERTIFIED SERVICE TECHNICIAN!!! The wiring layout was, according to him, wrong for a Boss 429 Ford. Because of that, he believed that that engine was 'not acceptable' for the award.

\I didn't have a snappy answer then for him, but one came to me later--how the heck does a current Ford Certified Service Tech know what the correct spark plug wiring layout looks like, unless the dealer has some customer who's bring his/her '69 Boss 429 Mustang in for service after all these years?

Then again, some people are savants with that level and type of information. There are people who can quote chapter and verse on every member of the New York Yankees' baseball stats since 1960, every production number of every option available on the 1988 Corvette, OR every song performed by the Grateful Dead in concert in Candlestick Park in San Francisco...ever.

But to disqualify a model at a contest because some detail was deemed incorrect? I attended an IPMS judging seminar a few years ago, and the instructor said correctness should NOT be a primary judging criteria. Who among us can say he or she is an expert on, say, paint colors for a particular military unit, in a particular theater, at a given point in time, he said. If two models are near equal, given all other judging criteria, then maybe, yes, correctness could be considered, but not before.

The interesting part of my 'discussion' with that other judge, was that I subconsciously raised my voice just loud enough (really? Some would argue that my voice was/is loud enough without amplification anyhoo...) for the BUILDER of that model to hear my defense of his model, and that was probably the point when he 'decided' that that judge should NEVER AGAIN be allowed to judge at any contest he was part of...