Yahoo Autos Which of 10 Hot Wheels Legends Tour Cars Will Be Immortalized?
Kicking off in 2018 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Hot Wheels, the annual Legends tour has grown to include more than a million participants around the globe. Now, contestants have been whittled down to a shortlist of 10, each of whom has a shot at having their creation immortalized in 1:64 scale. The winner will be announced this Saturday at noon ET and will be streamed live on YouTube.
If you grew up with Hot Wheels, you already know that it's the ultimate award, meaning that the winner's hard work and creativity will be smashing into floorboards and launching down the stairs all over the world. Here's a look at the finalists.
1934 Ford Pickup "FordTruss"
Hailing from the home state of the Hot Wheels design studio in El Segundo, California, this '34 Ford pickup is pure hot rod ethos mixed with aircraft-style elements. Its 430-hp 6.2-liter LS V-8 is a classic engine choice for the breed, but what sets the FordTruss apart is all the intricate little details, from water-jet-cut aluminum panels to the aeronautical-look gauges.
An exoskeleton pickup bed completes the tough-but-lightweight theme.
1981 DeLorean
Made famous by the Back to the Future franchise, the DeLorean DMC-12 is a stainless steel icon. This one, however, is part dystopian cyberpunk character and part French urban graffiti art project.
Built by French drifter Alexandre Claudin, this car's tepid rear-mounted V-6 has been punted to the curb in favor of a 500-hp LS out of a Corvette mounted up front. It's built to slide and has the messy vibe of a graffiti'd Parisian subway car.
1983 Austin Mini “Mentley”
Believe it or not, this runty little hooligan started out life as an original Mini. Built by owner Dominic Whittle along with help from his friends, it's the ultimate British-man-with-shed-spec track special.
The "Mentley" has a rorty Rover V-8 under the good, a five-speed manual out of a Range Rover, and a 1920s Bentley-ish theme.
This thing looks meaner than Brick Top from Guy Ritchie's Snatch and will run the quarter-mile in 11.2 seconds.
1957 BMW Isetta RV
An emphatically lowercase recreational vehicle, this tiny three-wheeled RV taps right into the whimsy you sometimes get with Hot Wheels' more fantastical creations. Built by fabricator Mikey Brown, it's the exception that proves the rule that everything's bigger in Texas.
Brown built the car from little more than pile of scrap in just 80 days and uses it to camp with his kids.
2016 Volkswagen Beetle R-Line
Built in the UAE, this wildly customized Beetle has all the street presence of the modified Lamborghinis and Ferraris that you regularly see prowling the streets.
Owner Sameh Halal created his own widebody kit, fitted the interior with Recaro seats and Alcantara trim, and tuned the 2.0-liter engine up to over 400 horsepower.
1987 Porsche 944
A father-and-son project, Benjamin Pflug's classic '80s transaxle Porsche is all clean lines and subtle livery. The interior is all business, while the outside features a one-off integrated spoiler and pure 1980s three-spoke wheels.
Sitting low on air suspension, it's show car meets Kraftwerk-era Porsche.
1968 Ford Falcon “La Liebre”
The Chile-market Ford Falcon is perhaps not a vehicle you are familiar with, but that's okay because this tube-frame chassis mini Le Mans endurance racer is about as far from a Falcon as an ostrich is.
Built by Giuseppe Casagrande, who founded Cars & Coffee Chile to promote car culture in the country, it's got a 500-hp Chevrolet 350-cubic-inch V-8 up front and doesn't even weigh 2000 pounds. It looks absolutely brutal, and presumably driving it has the same effect as downing eight espressos.
1960 Chevrolet Apache
A clean-lined build that shows that less really can be more, Robert Zoller's hand-built low-rider pickup speaks softly and carries a big stick.
The build took six years and features a shortened front and rear end, subtle dark gray paint, and an air suspension to lay frame.
Under the hood is a 6.0-liter LS V-8.
1976 Lancia Beta HPE HF Turbo
Forget the shiny perfection of a concours-attending vintage Ferrari; this rough-and-tumble Lancia is as menacing as a midlevel Neapolitan street enforcer.
Featuring a 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine turbocharged up to 300 horsepower, it's all patina and widebody attitude, almost like an Italian take on a Japanese kaido racer.
1988 Ford Mustang “Timefox”
This Fox-body Mustang answers the question: What kind of car would Vanilla Ice be?
Crammed with late 1980s and early 1990s accents, Texan Regan McLaughlin's build is so dedicated to past decades as to have a GameBoy as a speedometer.
Even crazier, the expected 5.0-L Ford V8 has been ditched for an Australia-market 4.0-liter straight-six, fitted with a basketball-sized turbocharger.
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