Over the last few months covering 2025 and 2026, 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 they don't 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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The Amazing Metals cars (made by Jazwares) is a new release inspired by the kids' series Amazing Spidey and his Friends. There are about 19 different character cars with variations of several. Sold individually and in multi-packs. These are heavy cars and they have some speed. My fastest was the Ghost-Spider that came in as a 4-Star car. Note that these are all too wide for the standard orange track, but if you're using a somewhat wider track like myself, these are worthy of a pickup. See my page for the Jazwares cars for details on results.
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Mattel/Pixar cars. I tested 10 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), the gold Tex Dinoco and Finn McMissle (see blister). 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 2024/2025/2026 metal-base and/or metal body Hot Wheels premium cars.
I acquired 4 of the highly regarded Revert and found one burner that it made it to my 5-star ranks. This car has nice weight, a longer body, wide frame and relatively low center of gravity. I of the 4 ran poorly, so need to be patient on this one, but a good payoff. Another recent 5-star car was the Pandem Subaru BRZ from a 2025 Japanese Car Culture set (the pink car in the 6-pack image). |
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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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Vintage Corgi cars. The V.W. Hot Rod, the E Type Jaguar and the Ferrari 308 GTS. The first two are from the Whizwheel line of cars released in 1971. The first two were 1-Star speed cars.
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Auto World offers plastic wheel cars and trucks from their Deluxe series, I have two versions of the F-150. A fine 2-Star car, but was hoping for more. Ordered more from this series in hopes of finding more speed.
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I went through more than 45 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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Some more Matchbox cars. I finally found the metal-base version of the Dodge Viper GTS (black). A 3-star car. Also shown is a fast Camaro and a more recent mainline car, the '18 Bentley.
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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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