Hot Wheels Will Recreate An Enthusiast's Car In Toy Form

If you’ve spent a lot of time and money putting your personal stamp on a car, you’ll likely want to show it off as much as possible. Maybe you’ll take it to every show you possibly can, and perhaps you’ll plaster pictures of it all over the owner’s club Facebook page.

With some help from Hot Wheels, it’s possible to reach a much bigger audience. Launched in 2018, the Legends Tour seeks entries from project car builders across the world, with the winning vehicle each year having the honour of being recreated as a 1/64-scale model available for the public to purchase.

For the second time, the Tour is open for UK submissions at hotwheelsuklegendstour.co.uk up until 1 October. A panel including car design legend Ian Callum will pick whichever entry “best captures the Hot Wheels spirit,” with the judging broadcast live on 14 October via a certain YouTube channel called Car Throttle.

The UK champ will go up against winners from the USA, Japan, Mexico and Germany. Whichever car comes out on top from that bunch will be remade in miniature die-cast form and join the Hot Wheels range from 2022.

“We’ll be looking for the very best whether that’s a pre-war British hot rod, a ‘70s or ‘80s ‘restomod’, an extreme custom hot hatch build from the ‘90s or one of today’s bespoke hypercars, we want to see the finest cars the UK has to offer,” Hot Wheels design boss Ted Wu said.

The winning cars really are varied. Previous victors range from a subtle and cool Honda N600 with a 12,500rpm-capable motorbike engine, to a loud and proud Nash Metropolitan-based hot rod. Last year’s UK winner was a gorgeous, bagged Hillman Imp which was featured on the CT YouTube channel (video above).