Last month, Tesla announced an upcoming affordable US$35,000 Model III. This month, Tesla’s newest model (in the literal sense of the word), comes courtesy of a collaboration with Mattel’s Hot Wheels.
While a real specced-out Model S will cost you upwards of $100,000 most ways you slice it, the 1:64th-scale Hot Wheels version is affordable in anyone’s books. As far as Hot Wheels go, I’m willing to hazard a guess that there are almost as many full-grown gear heads that collect Hot Wheels as there are children.
This isn’t the first 1/64th-scale Tesla. The Hot Wheels version of Tesla’s first car, the Roadster, is now a bonafide collectors’ item. You can find them on eBay selling for $30 to $50.
The metallic silver 1/64th-scale Model S comes with a set of mean-looking black wheels with a red lip and a low-slung decorative spoiler. Currently, you can only buy the metallic silver Model S, but a red one is to be released shortly. On designing the Tesla Model S Hot Wheels Edition, Hot Wheels Project Designer, Ryu Asada, said it was challenging to design an electric car because it lacked an engine and exhaust pipe, amongst other things toy cars typically have.
You can be sure most of those adult collectors will be shelling out the buck-or-two for their very own Model S to admire (through the packaging, of course – no one actually opens their Hot Wheels). We’re also pretty sure that most of the children who end up with a 1:64 Model S will be ecstatic to learn all about it, and hopefully, by the time they’re old enough to drive, a Tesla will actually be affordable enough so that your average gear head could hope to own a real live one – one that would leave the packaging and be driven.
Javier Verdura Director of Product Design at Tesla Motors, says “It’s cool because you play with them as a child, we all played with Hot Wheels, and then to say okay lets have a Tesla that’s a Hot Wheels, it’s a real honor.”
