1968
The original Hot Wheels were made by Elliot Handler. Handler discovered his son Kenneth playing with Matchbox cars and decided to create a line to compete with Matchbox. Hot Wheels were originally conceived by Handler to be more like “hot rod” cars (i.e., customized/modified or even caricaturized or fantasy cars, often with big rear tires, superchargers, flame paint-jobs, outlandish proportions, hood blowers, etc.), as compared to Matchbox cars which were generally small-scale models of production cars. He began producing the cars with assistance from fellow engineer Jack Ryan
The Sweet 16
The first line of Hot Wheels Cars, known as The Original Sweet 16 was manufactured in 1967. These were the first of the Red Line Series, named for the tires which had a red pin stripe on their sides.
There were sixteen castings released, eleven of them designed by Harry Bentley Bradley with assistance from Handler and Ryan.The first one produced was a dark blue “Custom Camaro”.[1] Bradley was from the car industry and had designed the body for the (full-sized) Dodge Deora concept car and the Custom Fleetside, (based on his own customized 1968 Chevrolet C-10 fleetside.
Racing Track Set
In addition to the cars themselves, Mattel produced a racing track set (sold separately). Though it would be updated throughout the years, the original track set consists of a series of bright orange road sections (pieced together to form an oblong, circular race track), with one (or sometimes two) “superchargers” (faux service stations through which cars passed on the tracks, featuring battery-powered spinning wheels, which would propel the cars along the tracks).Hot Wheels’ use of wide, hard-plastic tires created much less friction and tracked more smoothly than the narrow metal or plastic wheels used on contemporary Matchbox cars. Hot Wheels cars were designed to roll easily and at high speeds, which was a great innovation at the time
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