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Like many of you, Hot Wheels cars were a big part of my childhood. I believe those little redline mag wheels got me hooked on cars when I was 6 years old. The past few months I've decided to build tributes to the original "Sweet 16" Hot Wheels introduced in 1968. I have acquired, at a huge cost, one of all 16 cars and have started the build collection with first the Custom Cougar, Deora and Hot Heap. Finished the Custom T-Bird 7/17 I will be adding to this thread as I build them. I'm not building high detailed models, in fact I'm trying to replicate what these would be as bigger 1/25 scale versions, even with silver painted chassis and engine compartments with chrome engines if I can as I did with the Hot Heap, so be fair in judgement these are not built to be Best of Show models. The "Redline" wheels are Pegasus "T's". I used black and red sharpies to create the illusion of the Redline wheels. Hope you enjoy looking at these, as much as I'm having fun building them. 1967 Custom Cougar - Deora - Handmade surf-boards were fun to make from plastifoam board Hot Heap - Built this for a stock 1913 Model T kit from Russia I found on ebay, hard to find full-fendered T models. I heavily modified this to look like the Hot Wheel. I know, there is an MPC kit to build this from but hard to find and crazy money. 1967 T-Bird- Added the "custom hood bump"

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I've posted before of my Hot Wheels 1/25 1968 "Sweet 16" tribute builds. I aquired every kit to build all 16, not an inexpensive endevor by the way. I built 4- of them last year and just finished my first for 2017. Interesting while studing the differences from the Hot Wheels and either the actual car it may have been created from and the actual kit produced, there are modifications to be made to every one of them with exception of the Custom Vette. This build to tribute the actual Hot Wheels Silouette required several body mods most might pick up on at first glance when looking at the model kits produced. I molded in the "hood" and cowl to the body as the Hot Wheel is. Next, fitment of the bubble glass, the kit has the glass mounted to an external hinge, not on the Hot Wheel, so modified the glass bubbles to mount flush. The biggest modification is the Hot Wheel has molded front fender wheel humps. Not on the kit or actual car, so I molded my own to match the Hot Wheel version. One of my first Hot Wheels was this purple Silhoutte and my favorite to race down the orange tracks, I always thought it was the fastest. Comparision of stock to modified Hot Wheel The actual Hot Wheel

Decided to merge a bit of my favorite JDM tuning influences with a rock-star of a US sportscar. The original HOtwheels version was nice enough but had some glaring issues such as the big/little wheels sizes. Putting a smaller wheel on the rear meant there was a wider wheel gap and a slumped down rear end. This is the first time I work with modelling putty. Work done: Lowered. Wheel well filled in. Widebody conversion. Custom front splitter. Rocketbunny style rear spoiler. Side mirrors. Wheels cut and reassembled further out to sit flush with wider track. IMG_3597.xmp

Since I was a little 7 year old kid in 1967, my affliction with cars began when Mattel introduced the first "Sweet 16" Hot Wheels. That lead me into building plastic 1/25 scale, to building 1:1 circuit show-cars and now back to 1/25 scale building in my 50's again. Just recently decided I would search for all original 16 1967 released Hot Wheels cars, (like you perhaps, I had several of all 16 !) in 1/25 scale to build tributes to those Sweet 16 I found every 1/25 kit even the Ford J Car. Here is the work in progress of the Hot Heap 1915 Ford T future builds coming up, Custom Volkswagen, Custom T-Bird and the two finished Custom Cougar and Deora in the cases.

My favorite Hot Wheels car as a kid was the '36 Ford NEET STREETER. The look of that chopped 3W coupe all jacked up gasser-style was pure attitude. I wanted a "quick" project to finish for an upcoming contest, so I grabbed an AMT '36 Ford, a Malco '33 Willys, and started putting things together: That 427 Cammer is going to be a tight fit. Notching the X-member got me an extra 3/32" of setback, which may allow the blower drive to clear the radiator. Originally, I was trying to find a Miss Deal to use as a chassis/suspension donor. If I come up on one, that still could happen.