October 2021 • Photos Nestor Cabrera and Hot Wheels

In 2018, Hot Wheels created a series of events known as the Hot Wheels Legends Tour to commemorate its 50th anniversary. The tour consisted of 18 events held at Wal-Mart parking lots across the country. Each stop would feature a car show, where one car would be picked as a finalist for consideration to be recreated as a Hot Wheel die cast. The finalist would be displayed at the SEMA show in Las Vegas, where the winner would be chosen, and their car immortalized as a Hot Wheels.

Unfortunately, as the result of the global pandemic in 2020, the Legends Tour was put on hold and shifted to a digital format. Without missing a beat, the new format allowed participants the opportunity to showcase their creations to the entire world, and it also opened the door for builders outside the USA to enter their creations. The winner would be picked in a live stream event by a panel of celebrity judges.

Fast forward to 2021. It seemed as a live tour would not happen again but as the world began to open up Hot Wheels hit the road once more. This time the Legends tour consisted of both digital and live events. Torq Talk was fortunate to be invited to the tours last stop at Hot Wheels global headquarters in El Segundo, California.

As a result of covid mandates, the state and local safety protocols restricted the event by closing the doors to the public and allowing only 100 vehicles to be selected to participate. It doesn’t matter what your favorite style of car is, the Hot Wheels Legends Tour had just about every style imaginable. We spotted a very sweet 55 Chevy Bel Air Gasser dubbed Triassic-Five built by our good friend Brendon Vetuskey one of Hot Wheels’ very own designers—look for this car as a die cast very soon.

As we combed the field of cars, we spotted several low riders, a 4X4 Porsche 911, along with several high-end hypercars, but if you are not into that sort of thing, then you had a choice of slammed trucks, classic muscle, modern muscle, and tuner cars.

If all these cool cars were not you cup of tea, then Hot Wheels had its own fleet of custom cars from everyone’s favorite Bone Shaker, Twin Mill and the Fast and Loud Midas Monkey built by Gas Monkey Garage just to name a few.

Picking a winner took a who’s who panel of judges from the automotive industry. They had to look over in detail each entry and select a winner that would move on to the North America finals on October 28, 2021. The panel consisted of:

• Ted Wu – Vice President and Global Head of Design for Vehicles at Mattel

• Bryan Benedict – Design Director of Hot Wheels and Matchbox Diecasts

• Jarod DeAnda – The voice of Formula Drift and host of the Hot Wheels Legends Tour

• live stream events

• Estevan Oriol – Internationally celebrated professional photographer and filmmaker

• Emelia Hartford – SAG-AFTRA actress, car builder, racer, and automotive content

• creator

• Jonny Lieberman – Senior Features Editor at Motor Trend

• Dave Marek – ACURA Executive Creative Director at Honda R&D

And the winner…with a 1974 Chevy Impala lowrider—ideally dubbed the ‘Crystal Ship’ was Javier Covarrubias. Javier’s Impala is a ground-up rebuild that features a Chevy Caprice front clip, bespoke grille, 14-inch wheels, leather and suede interior accoutrements, hydraulic suspension, and a candy purple and orange exterior to match.

Javier and the other US and Canada tour stop winners will be moving on to the region’s semi-finals, where five cars will be chosen to compete against the international semi-finalist winners. These ten cars will compete in the Global Grand Finals in November where one car will be named the 2021 Hot Wheels Legends Tour winner, inducted into the Hot Wheels Garage of Legends and immortalized as a Hot wheel 1:64 scale die-cast toy.

The next event dates are:

October 28: Global Virtual Livestream Semi-Finals #1

November 4: Global Virtual Livestream Semi-Finals #2

November 13: Global Finale Livestream in Los Angels

 For more info, you can visit www.hotwheels.com