HotWheels — Best of 2019

Malaysia, despite being car crazy and sporting a healthy tuner lifestyle, is surprisingly low on the scale of places where you can pick up a good die-cast. I did manage, though, and walked away from BMW’s M-Track Days 2019 (story above) with a MiniGT Honda Civic, hastily purchased from the duty free shops at the KL airport.

Every generation has their decade specific car for the bedroom wall poster. The 80s favoured the Countach with a plethora of bikini clad women. The 90s saw the real king of hypercars emerge: the McLaren F1.

Ahh, 1:32 scale. For many of us, our first few steps into die-cast collection was not through 1:64s, but through the much more affordable-per-inch 1:32 scale. As children, these 1:32 scale models, almost all of them with a pullback option that allowed us the fantasy of “driving” them across tabletops, carpets and tiles, were precious and significant.

A recent thread on the Die-cast Car Collectors Club Bangladesh group on Facebook had a discussion on the pros and cons of closed shell

If you’re a fan of Initial D, you will want at least one model car sitting on your desk. The simplest and relatively inexpensive is the Dream Tomica AE86 Trueno.

I am not a bike person. I don’t really know how to ride one, I was never very well versed on things on four wheels, plus every ride on a

The 73 911 RS (Rennsport or ‘racing sport’) is considered by collectors to be one of the hottest classic Porsches ever. The 207

Gorgeous is an understatement. The Porsche 964 is possibly one of the coolest, most lust worthy 911 ever made. Yes, you will possibly

Resin is the bane of most scale model collectors’ existence. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way. Within a day of owning my first resin

Who knew scale model collectors were so passionate about what they do? On Friday, 8th March 2019, the members of Dhaka's biggest

The highlight this week are the rally cars we want to have but can't. 1:43 has the widest collection of the most notable rally cars on earth.

LEGO isn't just for kids. Everyone knows that. If someone tells you they are, tell them they're the children for not realising that LEGO kits are precision engineering tools that allow you to build whatever your heart desires. For auto enthusiasts, LEGOs are an easy entry point to building and experimenting with four-wheeled machines, allowing you to customise, at least to a degree, on the fly.

There's high end 1/64s and then there's Tomica Limited Neo Vintage 1/64s. Forget the Greenlights and Auto Worlds and rubber tyre Hot Wheels, TLVN is in a class of its own in the number of details they can pack into something that barely goes over two inches.

The second generation Dodge Charger is by far the most bad-ass car to grace the movie screen. Bullitt, Fast and the Furious, Blade and Ghost Rider all preferred the obnoxiously loud muscle car as their ride of choice.

If you can't really afford the crazy high-end makers of 1/18 models like Autoart, Kyosho and ERTL, there's a cheaper option that gives

Some cars start off famous for handling, looks or for catching on fire without any reason. Others go on to star in movies and become legends. The Pontiac Firebird Trans Am did it several times. Once as Knight Rider and before that, as Burt Reynolds' trusty sidekick in

A Ducati 900 Monster. Made by Atlas, made in Bangladesh. Yep, That's right. These scale models are now made in Bangladesh, then sent abroad, then someone buys them with taxes and brings them back here. Why not sold here? Not a big enough market.

When you think of things made in Bangladesh, your mind no doubt reverts to plastic “chairman” chairs, plastic buckets, plastic mugs and generally things made of plastic. So when you come across a high-end, albeit closed shell, 1/18 scale model made from die-cast metal, it's bound to be a source of pride.

Matchbox has always been known for rather realistic castings that are true to stock designs. In comparison Hot Wheels veered towards custom tweaks and oddly proportioned cartoon cars.