"Large" models are something you are going to find with the free models like this on the web. They tend to be actual engineeriing mock-ups - or at least high resolution artwork - rather than models for Alice-type animations.

We're talking the difference here between a 640x480 typical viewing window and a 600 pixel per inch large engineering mock-up. The negative is a large physical model size - the positive is an incredible level of detail.

Usually "shrinking" a model doesn't cause much distortion - but obviously you will loose some detail. I usually try at least a 5x shrink per step - and often repeat that 2-3 times.

Note: A large initial model size can also give a "clipping" error when you try to have the camera "take a good look at ---". This is just because the object is to large to fit into the camera field of view - a shrink step or two will cause the problem to go away.