History of Hot Wheels

Before Hot Wheels, the huge market for small car models was dominated at that time by the British company Lesney with their Matchbox cars. Elliot Handler, co-founder of Mattel, decided to produce a line of die-cast toy cars for boys.

Although his executives thought it was a bad idea, he was able to capture much of this market by introducing a number of revolutionary features, including low-friction wheels suitable for racing on a track, and styling in tune with the times of customized, racing and show cars coming out of places like California.

There were sixteen castings released in 1968, eleven of them designed by Harry Bentley Bradley, with the first one produced being a dark blue Custom Camaro. Although Bradley was from the car industry, he had not designed the full-functioning versions of the real cars, except the Dodge Deora concept car, which had been built by Mike and Larry Alexander. Another of his notable designs was the Custom Fleetside, which was based on his own heavily-customized '64 El Camino.

Of the first 16 cars (sometimes called the "Sweet 16") by collectors, 9 were based upon customized versions of regular production automobiles of the era, and 7 were based upon real show cars and cars designed and built for track racing. All of the cars featured 'Spectraflame' paintwork, bearings, redline wheels, and working suspension.

The metallic 'Spectraflame' paintwork also marked out these models from drab enamel of Matchbox cars. The attractive finishes were achieved by firstly polishing the bare metal of the bodyshells and then coating them in a clear colored lacquer, and featured such exotic colors as 'Antifreeze', 'Magenta' and 'Hot Pink'.

Because 'Hot Pink' was considered a "girls color", it was not used very much on Hot Wheels cars. For most castings, it is the hardest color to find, and today can command prices ten times as high as more common colors.

In order for the cars to go fast on the plastic track, Mattel chose a cheap, durable, low-friction plastic called Delrin to use as a white bushing between the axle and wheel. The result was cars that could go up to scale 200 mph. The bushings were phased out in 1970, and replaced with flush black inner wheels with outer caps.

The early years of Hot Wheels are known as the Redline Era as until 1977 the wheels had a red line etched around the tire rim, popular on muscle cars at the time.The "Torsion Bar" suspension was simple, but flawed. Inside the car, the axles followed a "C"-like shape that was connected to the chassis.

When pushed down, the axles would bend like a real car. However the axles were hard to install on the chassis while being assembled and would become detached from the lugs on the baseplate if very hard pressure was applied.

Well played with cars would develop an obvious "sag" to the wheels. The suspension was redesigned in 1970 with solid axles mounted on a bar of plastic acting as a spring. Packaged along with the cars were metal badges showing an image of the car so fellow collectors could identify each other and compare collections.

Most importantly, there were designed to run on orange plastic track, which could be placed to make interesting jumps and loops. Power was by means of gravity, by attaching the starting point of a course to a table or chair via an included C clamp. A two-lane starting gate was available, allowing two lengths of track to be set up for racing.

Later sets had both the starting gate and a finishing flag which would be tripped by the first car. One of the most famous sets was the 1970 Mongoose & Snake Drag Race Set, which reached values as high as $500 during the 1990s, but has since been produced in modified replica form.

As it turned out, the Hot Wheels brand was a staggering success. This accomplishment must be put in its historical perspective: Basically, the series "re-wrote the book" for small die-cast car models from 1968 onwards, forcing the competition at Matchbox and elsewhere to completely rethink their concepts, and to scamper to try to recover lost ground.

Harry Bentley Bradley did not think that would be the case and had quit Mattel to go back to the car industry. When the company asked him back, he recommended a good friend, Ira Gilford. Gilford, who had just left Chrysler, quickly accepted the job of designing the next Hot Wheels models. Some of Hot Wheels' greatest cars, such as the Twin Mill and Splittin' Image, came from Ira Gilford's drawing board.

The success of the 1968 line was solidified and consolidated with the 1969 releases, with which Hot Wheels effectively established itself as the most important brand of small toy car models in the USA.