Originally published at: Restoring a 1970 Hot Wheels Red Baron car | Boing Boing
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I like his clever folded card design for trapping the car in an openable clamshell. I’ve glued the blister down on one side to make access to the card but this is cool with the separate card printing cut out underneath.
Here’s a nice resto showing replating and transparent Spectraflame paint. Redline Restoration: Hot Wheels 1968 Custom Corvette - YouTube
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This was fun. I would like to see a video about how that cars are assembled and packaged in the factory.
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Yeah, that wheel assembly and packaging seem unnecessarily complex. It would be cool to see how much had to be done by hand (if any).
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I never realized that the wheels were in two parts. Maybe I just didn’t play rough enough with my toys?
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I actually looked up this car after watching the video and apparently the earliest examples use the two part wheel design while later runs switched to a single piece wheel, very interesting stuff.
The other interesting bit is the Hot Wheels version is based on a scale model kit of a completely fictitious design that was later made into an actual running full scale car. An oddity in this whole thing is the toy version having front fenders while neither the scale model or the full size creation did.
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Ah, I thought it was a Red Baron vehicle.
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I’m fairly certain this was based on an actual vehicle, probably by George Barris. I had this Hot Wheels!
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The stamped metal button is such a cool addition to the finished piece.
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Same!
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I had it too! It was probably the most unique Hot Wheels car I had, and quite well made. I am pretty certain that my dad had a Revel model of the Red Baron car as well, but I have no idea what might have happened to it.
I gave all my Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars (in a vintage wheel case) to my oldest nephew a decade or so ago. I have no idea what he did with them, but I hope he enjoyed them.
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Really? No one posted this yet?
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I also had the Red Baron car along with quite a collection of cars. I have no idea what happened to them but I suspect my mom threw them out after I moved out.
That was SO a totally lame copy of the Speed Racer intro, so lame they didn’t even TRY to animate the 360 degree shot of Speed jumping out of the Mach 5 lol
I have a friend from high school who sells weed and flips Hot Wheels on eBay. I asked him if there was a Hot Wheels Ford Falcon like Mad Max’s Interceptor but there’s not, which seems like a huge oversight. One day I went over to his house to buy some weed and a little baby squirrel ran up my chest and looked me in the eyes. It had fallen out of a tree and he was bottle feeding it. It was so fucking cool. I’d ever been so close to a squirrel. They were buds. The next time I went over there, the squirrel was gone. He said one day it was running around and hit its head really hard, and then just turned wild. He let it go in the yard and never saw it again. That’s my Hot Wheels story.
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A much better ending would be: after the squirrel hit his head he went wild, he stole one of the hot wheels, drove off and was never seen again.
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