The Hot Wheels Elite Bugatti Type 59 is this year’s leftfield 1:64 masterpiece

I’m not a world authority on vintage Bugattis, nor am I a Bugatti superfan. Anything you read here, no matter how carefully checked, could be wrong. But if, like me, you grew up loving cars and racing, and had a father who knew lots about motorsport from its earliest days, then you in turn can’t help but know that Bugatti is very special – and represents far, far more than a bunch of multimillion-dollar Veyrons and Chirons.

This is an extreme close-up of my wallet. At a motor show in London at some point in the 1980s I bought this Bugatti pin badge. It went into my wallet then and has lived in probably a dozen wallets since. It currently resides in the latest, which is by far the nicest I have ever owned and was made by incredible artisan leathercrafters here in Alberta! Note for wallet-seekers: head for a small-town craft fair, not a big-city store.

The point is, Bugatti has always been in my consciousness as one of the great Grand Prix constructors and a physical embodiment of the term ‘vintage racing’. When I think of Bugattis I think of French Racing Blue single-seaters with snarling exhausts and beautiful eight-spoke alloy wheels. The best known of them, the Type 35, was perhaps the world’s first purpose-built, volume-produced race car.

There are plenty of larger-scale collectors’ models of the Type 35 but it’s a different, later model that got the nod for a new release in Hot Wheels’ Elite 64 line. The Type 59 was the last of Bugatti’s Grand Prix cars but didn’t enjoy the success of the Type 35 and other predecessors. By the time the ’59 appeared in 1934, the old guard of Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Bugatti were hastily being relegated to also-ran status in international Grand Prix racing by the Nazi-backed challengers from Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union. It’s thought that only six Grand Prix versions of the Type 59 were built.

Instead of contending at the front in the national Grands Prix of the European Championship (there was no World Championship until 1950), the Type 59 found itself scrapping for the minor placings with the Italians, or, later, battling with British ERAs and privateer Alfas and Maseratis in non-championship races. There was a sole international Grand Prix victory, at Spa in 1934, when the Germans withdrew and the Alfas crashed.

The Bugatti Type 59 may not have been a runaway success, but it was certainly a looker – revered as one of the prettiest race cars of all time – which is good news for the new Hot Wheels model. As with the Fiat 131 Abarth I recently reviewed, the designer is Mark Jones, while the blue paint scheme is the work of Andrés Andrieu.

(find Hot Wheels Bugatti Type 59 on eBay)

“My idea with the Bugatti Type 59 was to do a vehicle that none of our competitors would even consider modeling,” he says. “I’m not a fan of doing ‘me-too’ vehicles and I feel Hot Wheels is a brand that can afford to try different things.

“The choice of the Type 59 came about because my current design interest is trending to prewar cars and one of the best examples, in my opinion is the King Leopold Type 59. Since there is only one of those cars, I decided that the ‘standard’ Type 59 would be a better choice, as that would give the brand an option of several credible recolors.”

As Mark says, it’s hard to see any other 1:64 brand, even Mini GT in its pomp, taking on the Type 59. The King Leopold car he mentions started out as that 1934 Spa winner, but was later rebuilt and raced as a sportscar, and subsequently sold to King Leopold III of Belgium. You can read more about it here.

Let’s take a closer look at this outstanding new Hot Wheels.

This is a small car by regular three-inch standards. It’s 57mm (2.2in) long, which puts it at around 1:66 scale. Slightly smaller than 1:64, surprisingly. It must have been hard to include so much detail at this size, for the Bugatti follows the Elite brief of detailed, multipart designs. In particular, the dinky little hood pings off to reveal the 250bhp, supercharged straight-eight engine. Wow.

Aside from the hood, separate parts include the exhaust, steering drop arm, steering wheel and seat. There’s a lot of detail painting (check out the trademark horseshoe grille) and the miniscule Bugatti badge looks as crisp as the one in my wallet. Why must so many other Hot Wheels models make do with fuzzy, low-res graphics?

The design of the narrow wheels is unique to the model and is an interesting way of depicting them without forming individual wires, which must surely be near-impossible at this small size. They roll perfectly, of course.

Mark admits that the wheels were a challenge, “as these cars ran the distinctive piano wire wheels in period [not the earlier Bugatti spoked alloys]. I thought about a clear disc with tampo’d spokes but decided against that as it would have not appeared very bright,” he explains. “The image on the package has a different-style wire wheel depicted, which in my opinion is not quite correct, although I read that one of the cars that came to England did run with a more standard-looking wire wheel.”

With Mark now retired I’m not sure we’ll see the Type 59’s rivals immortalized in the Elite line but a Mercedes-Benz W25 or early Auto Union would be fantastic. Maybe those cars are politically problematic nowadays but if you’re interested, there was a great Corgi 1:36-scale of the W154 issued as part of a Mobil promotional set in 1989. An Alfa or Maserati might still work, though (Mussolini connections notwithstanding).

I always like to show new additions with other connected models from my collection. In this case, that’s a tough ask in 1:64 scale but I dug out my Matchbox Models of Yesteryear Bugatti Type 51 (above), a forebear that raced against it on occasion, and the ERA R2B ‘Romulus’ (below) that raced against Type 59s in 1935. Both came out as part of the Grand Prix collection that first appeared in 1986. I don’t have the original Yesteryear Type 35, first released in 1961, which at around 1:47 scale is smaller than either of these two.

(find Models of Yesteryear Grand Prix on eBay)

And finally… Mark Jones isn’t done with the Type 59 yet. He’s indulging in his love of slot cars during his retirement and is grafting the King Leopold Type 59’s nose onto a body from a PYRO Type 57 Atalante static kit!

That’s it. For $20, I don’t think you’ll find a more unusual or charming new model this year than the Elite 64 Bugatti Type 59, so grab one while they’re still on the Mattel Creations site or from eBay. There will always be another Skyline, but for this amazing Bugatti, there may be no second act. Happy collecting!

Thanks to Mark Jones for answering my questions. Follow him on IG @designspeed744.

(find Hot Wheels Bugatti Type 59 on eBay)

(follow me on Instagram @diecast215)