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Elliot Handler, co-founder of Mattel, decided to produce a line of die-cast toy cars to capture a portion of the small model car market that Lesney had with their Matchbox cars. The Mattel executives thought this was a bad idea. We all know how it turned out!
The original cars and trucks were introduced in 1968 in approximately 1:64 scale and designed to be used on associated Hot Wheels track sets. There were sixteen castings released in 1968, eleven of them designed by Harry B. Bradley, with the first one produced being a dark blue Custom Camaro. Although Bradley was from the car industry, he had not designed the full-functioning versions of the real cars, except the Dodge Deora concept car, which had been built by the Alexander brothers. Another of his notable designs was the Custom Fleetside, which was based on his own heavily-customized '64 El Camino. Those releases were ![]() Custom Camaro Custom Fleetside Custom Barracuda Custom Corvette Custom Cougar Custom Eldorado Custom Firebird Custom T-Bird Custom Mustang Custom Volkswagen (designed by Ira Gilford) Beatnik Bandit (designed by Ed Roth) Ford J-Car Hot Heap Deora Python (designed by Dean Jeffries, based on Cushenberry's "Cheetah" show car) Silhouette
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