Restored ’80s Chilean Race Car Will Get a Hot Wheels Mini-Me
Every year since 2018, Mattel hosts an international competition to a real-life custom car to immortalize as a Hot Wheels die-cast. Past winners have included scratch-built hot rods of all shapes and sizes, but so far, no race-car restorations. La Liebre, the winner of the 2024 Hot Wheels Legends Tour, may be the first.
This 600-hp Chevy-powered beast is a passion project of Cars & Coffee Chile, a nonprofit founded in 2013 to cultivate car culture in that country. It’s their mission that captured the judges’ attention:
“Not only is it an extremely impressive build,” says Ted Wu, senior vice president and global head of design, vehicles, and building sets at Mattel, “but it was created to help grow the car community in Chile and inspire others to participate. That’s what makes this vehicle, and the team behind it, deserving of the win and entry into the Hot Wheels Garage of Legends.”
The car, we suspect, has a more fascinating story yet. The name, “La Liebre,” translates to “The Hare.” The reference is obscure, though it has nothing to do with the story about the tortoise, and may have its origins in a series of stock cars called “Libre Torino,” built for Chile’s stock car racing series. (According to Wikipedia, Turismo Carretera is the oldest stock-car series in the world.)
This Hot Wheels Legends car, you’ll notice, doesn’t look much like the 1968 Ford Falcon from which it supposedly sprung. Though we don’t know much about this car other than it was active in the ’80s during the golden age of Chilean motorsport, we do know that its Falcon chassis was modified by an Argentinian firm named Bauer, who had partnered with Ford to build a rival to the IKA-Renault Torino, which had stolen the championship in 1967. Checks out, right? (That IKA project is significant for a multitude of reasons centering on Argentinia, Juan Manual Fangio, and the Nürburgring. A story for another time.)
Another name that came up a lot in our research is that of Juan Gac, a Chilean race car driver and mechanic who died in 2019 but was a bit of a national hero. He even found his way to the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1995, in a Pegasus-BMW prototype, and to the 24 Hours of Daytona, in a Camaro. Several sources connect him with a “mythical” race car called The Hare. Perhaps this black beauty was originally a passion project of his in the ’80s, after he had a taste of prototype racing at Sebring? We’re genuinely unsure and would love to know more. Reach out if you have any information on it!
After watching a lot of TikToks, we can definitively say that this modern-day La Liebre was a labor of love. Someone put a lot of work into documenting the build and recruiting a vast array of sponsors to get this car cleaned, restored, updated, and back on the road between August of 2023 and the end of November. Why November? That’s when Cars & Coffee Chile hosted its own version of the Festival of Speed. It was the perfect venue for a nostalgic Chilean race car to reappear, restored, in front of adoring fans.
@carsandcoffeechile Capítulo 1 La Liebre. Todo apoyo y sponsors son bienvenidos, nos pueden dejar un correo a info@carsandcoffee.cl o enviarnos un mensaje directo. Estaremos compartiendo fotos y videos de todo el proceso!!!! #laliebre #auto #autos #autosdeportivos #autostiktok #autosymas #parati #fyp #carreras #restauracion #v8 #chile #arreglo #antiguo #museo ♬ Intergalactic Janet – Ley Soul
The Cars & Coffee Chile team got ahold of their hare in sorry shape: First off, it was filthy. Cleaning off the grime revealed bright blue paint and some big-name sponsors: Valvoline Racing, STP, Federal Mogul, and Simpson, along with what appears to be an industrial radiator shop called Radiadores Gallardo in Santiago, Argentina.
They disassembled the wheels to figure out what size of tires the car needed, meanwhile sending the barrels off to a shop that would clean them up and polish them. Brake lines had to be made from scratch before they could test the brake fluid pump. By September 3, the team had already cleaned and removed the Chevrolet V-8 engine, replaced the battery and fuel lines, and installed a new, 60-liter gas tank. The Mickey Thompson cylinder heads, meanwhile, were at another shop getting stripped of their weathered paint and dipped in something more temperature-resistant. Finally, the Hare’s engine ran again! Up until this point in the project, the C&C team was working in borrowed facilities.
Some of the bodywork was already at a partner’s shop for repair: 7workscustoms. Here’s a photo of what they started with:
And here, as you know by now, is what they ended with.
We love the Hot Wheels Legends Tour not only for the badass builds that it brings out of the woodwork, but for drawing our attention to people and cars we might not have otherwise come across. (Well, except for the 2020 winner, which we were familiar with from SEMA!) Cheers to Cars & Coffee Chile—we can’t wait to see a La Liebre Hot Wheels perched on that giant rear wing!
