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History of Hot Wheels Cars

Hot Wheels are toy and collectible cars. The die-cast metal car series, owned by Mattel, is famous for tabletop and floor raceways. The cars are powered by gravity and can zoom through loops. The miniature cars thrived in styles like hot rods and 1970s muscle cars but also came out in NASCAR, Formula One and other licensed versions.

Inventor
- Elliott Handler, co-founder of Mattel, invented the Hot Wheels cars. His wife Ruth designed the famous Barbie doll.
Introduction
- The first sixteen Hot Wheels were introduced in 1968 with models like the Corvette, Mustang, Firebird, Barracuda and Cobra.
Models
- Over 10,000 different models of Hot Wheels have been designed.
Production Record
- In 2008, celebrating the four billionth car produced, Hot Wheels created a unique diamond-encrusted 1:64 scale car made with over 2700 diamonds.
Milestone
- Hot Wheels celebrated its 40th anniversary with a United States tour showing life-size Hot Wheels cars.
Blueprints
- Hot Wheels and major automakers often partnered to use actual full-size car blueprints for creating small scale cars.

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