Hot Wheels Behind the Scenes: How one man's hot rod became a Legend:
from the U.S. Postal Service , it’s clear that these simple-yet-evocative toys remain an integral part of car culture.With so many Hot Wheels trashed by moms and dads over the years, or smashed by action-loving boys and girls, the rarest, mint-condition specimens are fetching sums associated with cars you can actually drive. I meet Bruce Pascal, a Washington, D.C.-area man whose love of the cars was rekindled when his mother returned a seemingly long-lost cigar box full of cars.
Today, Pascal is considered the world’s preeminent Hot Wheels collector. His collection of about 4,500 cars includes nine of the 10 rarest models in history; including what aficionados call the Holy Grail: A manufacturing prototype of a 1969 VW Beach Bomb Rear-Loader Bus, painted hot pink, which killed its sales to young lads, but sent its future value off-the-charts. Only about 50 pink surfer buses were made, each with a pair of boards hanging out the back.
Pascal notes how Hot Wheels blew Matchbox — for years the dominant car toy — out of the water, through what Mattel’s then-president called “playability.” Where Matchbox cars had crude steel axles and wobbly, easily breakable wheels, Hot Wheels had flexible wire axles — originally from guitar strings in prototype form — with inboard chassis mounts, Delrin bushings in plastic tires and cambered wheels; helping them roll straight at claimed scale speeds of over 300 mph.
“Every car lover, from our parents to today’s generation, has played with a Hot Wheels, or owned one.
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