It was almost 40 years ago that Mattel, Inc., brought a set of 16 die-cast cars to market. These little 1:64 scale cars were designed with wheels that spun freely and shiny bright paint scheme and were an immediate hit. Hot Wheels was born.

Since that time, more than three billion Hot Wheels cars have been produced, and according to the folks at Mattel, more than 41 million adults grew up playing with Hot Wheels cars, including yours truly (I still have four of them sitting on my desk).

To help celebrate the 40 year milestone, Hot Wheels did something it had never done before – allowed designers outside of Mattel to design a series of new Hot Wheels cars.

“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 past 40 years?” said Geoff Walker, vice president, Wheels marketing, Mattel Brands.

On display at the Hot Wheels booth at the SEMA show were the results of this new design idea, with models from Dodge, Ford, General Motors, Lotus, Honda and Mitsubishi. Not only did these new cars have to capture the Hot Wheel’s essence of speed, power, performance and attitude. They also had to be able to perform a loop on a Hot Wheels orange track.

Each manufacturer presented three designs and a panel of judges made the final selection. To better present these new Hot Wheels, both the standard 1:64 scale and a larger 1:5 scale model were created.

The chosen models were:

• Dodge XP-07 (Dodge, Designed by Mark Reisen)
• Gangster Grin (Ford, designed by Steve Gilmore)
• Chevroletor (General Motors, designed by Amaury Diaz-Serrano)
• Honda Racer (Honda, designed by Guillermo Gonzalez)
• Lotus Concept (Lotus, designed by Russell Carr)
• Mitsubishi Double Shotz (Mitsubishi, designed by Gary Ragle)
• HW-40 (Hot Wheels, designed by Jun Imai)

We spoke to several of the designers and all were quite honored to be able to design a Hot Wheels car. Most had played with the little cars when they were younger, and to have your own Hot Wheels car was very special.

This was also a unique opportunity to create a vehicle without the normal restrictions on design. Hot Wheels don’t have safety equipment, visibility doesn’t matter, engines don’t have to actually exist, and technology can be make-believe. 

But they have to excite the imagination, and these new models do just that. Here’s to 40 more years of fast rolling Hot Wheels cars.