SEMA: Hot Wheels brings hot rods



John Neff checked in from SEMA all excited about Mattel's Hot Wheels booth and we totally understand. We'd be willing to bet that many regular Autoblog readers have 1:64 scale hot rods doing 360s on their desks.

Mattel knows their market, and sent not only hundreds of their beloved miniature cars, but also flew in three full-sized hot rods.

Hot Wheels fans from the 1960s might remember their toy cars being vibrant, metallic colors. Those hues went away in the 1970s due to the large amount of lead used in their Spectraflame paint. Mattel has now teamed up with PPG to produce a new (hopefully lead-free) Spectraflame paint for adult-sized rides.

Photos of the SEMA Hot Wheels display including the three hot rods after the jump.


Mattel commissioned a street rod 1966 GTO for their booth this year. Purevision handled the build and has the before pictures on their website. We, however, have the fabulous after shots. The '66 Goat wears a suit of PPG's new Hot Wheel Spectraflame Watermelon paint over a Pontiac 421 and KMC Hot Wheels 20" wheels.



Click on placard for high-res image.


The 1959 Chevy Impala is one sweet custom rod. An entry in the 2006 Detroit Autorama, the 540 cid rod is said to crank out 1,000 horses. And those are definitely not small scale.



Then there's the return of Johnson's Hot Rod Shop blazing orange 1971 G-Force Plymouth Barracuda. First built for SEMA in 2005, it still impresses with a NOS-fed, 572 cubic inch Hemi, carbon fiber body panels, and 20-inch rear wheels covering titanium brake rotors. We'll take one no matter the scale.




Mattel also brought along several hundred examples of what they're best known for. There will be many a Hot Wheels collector dreaming of this sight tonight.

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