hot wheels fortieth anniversary design competition

as a little boy i had a respectable collection of dinky cars and corgis. these were very small diecast cars that were as true-to-the-original as was possible given their diminutive size.
hot wheels ® entered the world in 1968 at a time when the show car circuit was really taking off. the cars on the street were either the earliest econoboxes, massive landboats, or insanely overpowered muscle cars. hot wheels came in with a bang producing cars that were largely fantasy, painted in colours that had never been seen before and with design details that boys drooled over. here’s one of the very first hot wheels models, a highly modified volkswagen beetle . . .
in this, hot wheel’s® first year, sixteen models were released. nine were customized versions of real cars of that era and seven were based on actual show cars. after that the hot wheels® brand grew and flourished. mattel reveals some staggering statistics: mattel estimates that 41 million children grew up playing with the toys, the average collector has over 1,550 cars, and children between the ages of 5 and 15 have an average of 41 cars. my own collection is just over sixty cars strong but i have one simple rule and it runs somewhat counter to the hot wheels design aesthetic and that is that the car should look in design and colour as close to the original as possible. that is why my own statistics as such are skewed compared to mattel’s.

so this is the fourtieth anniversary of hot wheels® and to celebrate they gave carte blanche to chevrolet, dodge, ford, honda, lotus and mitsubishi (as well as an in-house team) to develop cars that “capture the die-cast brand's core essence of speed, power, performance and attitude, while also encompassing the distinct attributes of each company's automotive brand values.” yeah right! the idea was to have a ton of fun and produce another fantastic little car for people like me.

here’s the scoop from hot wheels itself.

"this is the first time in hot wheels history that we've turned outside the company to seek new car designs; and who better to go to than our automotive partners who have been a part of hot wheels history for the last 40 years?" says geoff walker, vice president, wheels marketing, mattel brands. "we couldn't be more thrilled with the results of this program, and we're anxious to see the designs come to life as 1:64-scale models on store shelves next spring."

so, enough talking, here are the final designs. from dodge, a typically muscle-bound car drawing loosely on the viper but definitely in a league of its own.
from ford, the "gangster grin". a retro low-rider with a devilishly huge grill/grin . . .
chevrolet weighs in with the purposeful looking "chevroletor". here it is looking like it would be at home setting a landspeed record on the bonneville flats . . .
from mitsubishi, a high-end streetracer - the "double shotz" . . .
more images and commentary can be found over at carbody design.
from honda a playful take on the honda logo results in a racing car for two . . .
(to see more images of this car nip over to the feature that wired has done on it).

and from lotus a swoopy derivative of their current styling cues . . .
a lovely gallery of images of this car can be found over at auto unleashed.

video of the vehicles as rendered in one sixth scale can be viewed here . . .
and just in case you think this wasn’t a big deal to the car designers involved in this competition, spend a couple of minutes viewing this . .