It is always strange the roundabout way we discover, or rediscover, a Hot Wheels model. There are a million ways it can happen. Maybe a new release of a casting you didn’t pay attention to earlier all of sudden grabs your attention. Or maybe a brilliant blog shows the model, and in a different light you see why it is worth collecting. (If only there was an awesome blog like that.)
Sometimes the model has been sitting in your collection forever, and one day you pull it out and gain a new appreciation for it. There are a million other ways rediscoveries happen. But they happen all the time.
The Hot Wheels ’66 Chevelle is definitely one of those models. Until recently, the two I had sat among a bunch of loose cars in a box in my storage unit. One was from the Hot Wheels Racing Stockcar line, and the other from Boulevard. They sat in those loose boxes for years, every once in a while scraping against all the other loose models as I dug for models.
I was fond of the two of them, but not enough to put them in my permanent collection. I was also aware of the Smokey Yunick Tribute Model from Vintage Racing, and it sat on my “eventual want list”.
That finally changed a few months ago. A “rediscovery” happened, only with the entire Vintage Racing line, and I decided to pursue a few more models. I made a list of those I needed, and decided to pursue some low hanging fruit to complete the collection. I wanted the Chevelle, but the price of $25-$35 seemed more than I wanted to pay.
I should have jumped. Others must have been thinking the same way I was, and the prices on the Chevelle started to climb. $50 to $60 to $70. Then Hot Wheels used the casting as the Finale Car at last year’s Hot Wheels Convention, and the price of the Vintage Racing jumped.
We know the evolution. What was once “a model I will eventually acquire if I can” turned into “a model I must have”. Ebay searches became more frequent, and prices still went up.
I finally found one at a decent price (well more than the $25 I had seen before) and bit. That turned into a chat with the seller, and he was able to fill in all my Vintage Racing gaps. I completed the Vintage Racing set using his help, and the Chevelle came with a bunch of other models.
The model that most impressed my in Vintage Racing? The Galaxie. Second was the Chevelle. The Vintage Racing was here, I dug through the bins for the other two, and added my Convention Finale Car. And now all four sit in my wall display.
It took awhile to see, but this model is a complete stunner. The casting was made for Vintage Racing, to replicate the Smokey Yunick Chevelle. The real car was a heavily modified Chevelle that never passed racing inspections, and therefor never raced. But that didn’t stop it from becoming a legendary car. And a very worthy Hot Wheels.
The casting is fairly consistent with the real car, and maybe that is why we haven’t seen a ton of other versions. While sporadic, each release has had it’s own fantastic look. And I am happy to have all four.
(Find the Hot Wheels 66 Chevelle on ebay)
It’s a really great casting. I picked up almost every one of the triple digit I found. I hadn’t started collecting (again) until the very end of the Vintage Racing collection and I would have snapped up Smokey’s car and I probably would have even though I wasn’t collecting if I had spotted it.