Hot Wheels is going bigger and blockier with its ’77 Pontiac Firebird building set
Mattel, the owner of both Hot Wheels and Mega building blocks, is now offering an 843-piece building set of a custom 1977 Pontiac Firebird. The set, which comes with a traditional 1:64-scale die-cast Hot Wheels toy of the car, is in the same vein as Lego’s line of kits aimed at adult collectors. Like those kits, this one also has a similar scale, with the completed car coming in at just over one foot long.
The set isn’t a numbers-matching replica of a Firebird, but rather, appears to be modeled after a custom Trans Am. It has a shaker hood, naturally, but it wears custom rockers and the screaming phoenix on the hood doesn’t match any factory decal that we can recall.
The model features plenty of detail, with a functioning hood, doors, and trunk. The engine even seems to have an accessory drive belt! Hot Wheels notes that the Pontiac V-8 engine is removable, although there was no mention of an LS-swap kit available separately. Give them time.
This kit is available exclusively at Target and it’s priced around $80. If this one’s a hit, maybe we can get more models to round out the collection and keep Lego on its toes.
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I mean, it needs to be black, but glad they’re making the effort. Time to find even more space on my desk…
I agree, it would be better in black. It’s interesting but I kind of prefer 1:18 scale models.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if Lego or some custom car builder converted a real Firebird to look exactly like the Lego scale model version. The body work could be done by sculpting foam with a ton of body filler.
Hot Wheels has done that with some of their full size show cars (Twin Mill, for example), creating a real car that looks like a toy car.
PS – I would never sacrifice a perfectly good Firebird to build a life size Lego version, but there are still plenty of old rust buckets sitting around around that could become the core for such a project.