When you look at the drawings of the AMT some things jump out at you. The nacelles are further apart than they are on the 11 footer. The support pylons attach to the pylons exactly at 45 degrees which they don’t on the 11 footer. The pylons are set a bit further forward on the secondary hull. The contours of the saucer are different and the saucer edge is less angled. The B/C deck structure is different. The warp nacelle detail is different.
If you were building the AMT model there are accurizing parts you can get from Federation Models, but there is still a limit to what you can do because there are differences in the shapes of major elements on the model. So superficially it looks like an Enterprise type ship, but there are quite a few differences such that you could imagine it as an entirely different class. Indeed one could conjecture that it could be an older class than the Enterprise, and as such it could be perfect to depict the Constellation with its lower registry 1017.
Candidly I suspect that wasn’t the intention behind using the available AMT model kit. They simply wanted a quick and affordable way to depict another Enterprise like ship and one they could “damage” to make it look totally wrecked. But the likely unintended consequence of using that model with its differences from the 11 footer, and (rather lazily) using 1017 for the registry rather than 1710 or just any other 1700 series number, created speculation this was an older and perhaps wholly different class of ship than the Enterprise.
Creative intent doesn’t always translate. Originally the idea was that the arrowhead insignia was to depict all starships—no matter which ship you were assigned to you wore an arrowhead insignia. If you were assigned to a starbase then you wore a different insignia. But that got botched somewhere and the notion that different ships have distinct insignia took hold. That idea was borne out of having a way to clue the audience whether a character onscreen belonged to the Enterprise or not. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Consequently from mixed communication we got distinct insignia for the Constellation, the Exeter and the Defiant leading to the conclusion all major starships have their own distinct insignia. The only common element with the Enterprise was that the department symbols within the insignias should be the same throughout all ships…supposedly.
It was never supposed to be that way, and come the production of TMP a definitive reset was established to have all Starfleet personnel sport the arrowhead. And it’s been that way since throughout all productions.
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