In 2025 I was able to acquire and test a large variety of castings across many brands. Here is a summary and some highlights of the cars I tested and/or found success with.
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Some vintage Matchbox. The red/yellow AMC Mercedes is a fast car, with my fastest being the Laser Wheel version At 2.506 (4-Star). This Superfast version ran a strong 2.518, an improvement on my previous Superfast. But still not beating the 2.506. The excellent Nissan 300ZX Laser Wheel did not beat my other model of 2.495. But anytime you can acquire these legendary cars at a good rate, it's worth it. The pink Stock Car and the Pontiac Firebird Racer both came in at 1-Star entries.
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Matchbox Lesney Superfast from the 1970's and early 1980's. This vintage set of cars is fun to collect, but does not have high-end speed. I have most of the Superfast cars now. See the Matchbox Lesney Superfast tab for more details.
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Mattel/Pixar cars. I tested 8 new models and found the most success with the incredibly fast, Andrew Vrooman, my first 5-Star car from the Cars series. 4-Star entries includes Costanzo Della (maroon), the super heavy Westfalanapus (yellow van) and the gold Tex Dinoco. See the Mattel Pixar tab for details of all the best Pixar cars so far.
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Acquired 6 new vintage SIKU cars featuring the whitewall/deep dish tiers. The blue Mercedes-Benz 500 SE was the best becoming my 9th 5-Star SIKU car. The green Audi 200 ST was a strong 4-Star car. See the SIKU tab and Rankings tabs for details.
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Tested a host of 2024/2025 metal-base and/or metal body Hot Wheels premium cars. The most successful were the pink Pandem Subaru BRZ from the Japanese Car Culture Multipack (first image), the '95 Toyota Celica GT-Four (adjacent grey car) and the Revert from the Silver Series AcceleRacers release.
I bought a couple of the Reverts and they ran about the same. This car has the characteristcs of a very fast car (nice weight, longer body, wide frame, relatively low center of gravity), but falls short of expectations, but still worth a pickup and hopefully I can find a burner in the near future. There are a few other metal cars I have yet to acquire so I'll get to those in the next few months. |
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The super cool, metal-base 1974 Dodge Charger (#43) from the 1999 Pro Racing series is known as a strong racer, but is tough to find (the plastic wheel version that is). It ran a solid 2.535 for me, but was expecting more.
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I have nearly all the potentially fast Johnny Lightnings, but always felt I could find a faster 1950 Ford F-100 Pickup ("Wolverine"), currently at a 4-Star level at 2.507. But alas no improvement.
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I went through more than 40 new Hot Wheels mainlines from the 2024 and 2025 releases. Most did not qualify (aka slower than my minimum 2.600), but several broke through, A few standouts.
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My first successful Realtoy car. The Porsche Cayenne ran a decent 2.567 time.
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A few odds-and-ends include the Kenner/Hasbro Batman car, a more contemporary SIKU van and another vintage Tomica car (Porsche 928). 1-Star, 2-Star and 1-Star cars respectively.
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