Hot Wheels Reveals Salt-Inspired Aston Martin DB4GT

Bonneville Speed Week is one of our favorite events to cover. The range of vehicles you’ll find competing is almost as stunning as the alien landscape. Every time we go we find unique builds of cars we’d never expect to see. Bonneville inspires the folks at Hot Wheels, too, and their latest creation, the DB4GT “High-Speed Edition,” is a perfect example of the sleek and beautiful machines you’ll find on the salt.

Aston Martin designers Miles Nurnberger and Thomas Gilbert collaborated with Craig Callum, Design Manager at Hot Wheels, to determine what a classic DB4 might look like if it were reshaped for all-out speed on the salt flats. With a stretched wheelbase, a front splitter, rocker skirts, and a chopped top, the DB4GT looks like it’s built for the SCTA’s Modified Sports class and ready to run at Speed Week.

“The juxtaposition between the sophistication of Aston Martin’s original design and outlandish land speed cars results in an extraordinary die-cast, even by Hot Wheels standards,” says Craig Callum. This new design is the 13th Aston Martin that Hot Wheels has created since the two brands worked together to bring a V8 Vantage to 1:64 scale in 2005.

“Our intention for this collaboration was to reimagine an iconic Aston Martin model through the lens of some aspect of American car modifying culture which chimed with the Hot Wheels brand,” said Thomas Gilbert. “My design theme sketch, which Hot Wheels and Miles chose to develop, imagined a DB4GT-based land speed record car, very specifically inspired by those that run every year on the Bonneville salt flats. I even sketched the car in that unique setting, so the Bonneville name has been very much intrinsic to the design for us since day one. Following my sketch being selected, our company historian did some research and found that a customer in the 1960s did in fact take his DB4GT to Bonneville and drove it at high speed in the annual speed trials, which cemented the ‘Bonneville’ theme from a historical as well as a design standpoint.”

Try as we might, we couldn’t find photos of the DB4 that competed at Bonneville in 1961. We’re sure it looked great on the salt, but it probably would have looked even better if it had some racy scallops on the side like this die-cast, as they fit the theme perfectly. If you want to add this British bullet to your collection you can find it on store shelves starting in October.