Last week we discussed about things we collect.

Model cars came up quite a bit, so the question I have for you today is:

Why stop with "buying and storing" when you can make the car unique?

Things you will learn about today:

These are plain improvements from a "lower tier" car into a "higher tier/quality" one.

Hot Wheels that cost 2 to 3 euros are called "mainline" within the community.

Then you have another "midline" tier of 4 to 5 euros, and finally the Premium line of around 10 to 12 euros.

When you get a mainline, do a wheel swap and some details addition, you get pretty close to a Premium one.

Older cars usually are banged up from being played with.

But they are also very interesting in terms of history and many are not made anymore due to expired licensing agreements.

In general, I am against restoring cars that you played with, because it's part of their history.

But you can definitely get great bargains in flea markets that are pretty banged up.

With a bit of love and patience, these can be restored to their former glory or even your own interpretation of the car.

Customising can be as simple or complicated as you want it to be.

The easiest way to start is to grab some markers and add details to the cars. Especially Hot Wheels mainlines and similarly low priced ones have good "castings" (the metal body shape) but lack details like lights, chromes or plastics.

Adding these improves the model a lot with not much effort.

But the changes can go so much deeper.

I will show you the most extreme custom I have done:

I was born in Argentina.

Out there, people use bicycles every once in a while, and when they need to lock them at destination, they use a bicycle lock or chain.

When I moved to the Netherlands in 2022, I noticed they do that here as well, but almost every bike has an integrated rear wheel lock as well.

This gets unlocked with a different key, and it stays in the lock while you ride, until you park and lock it again.

I figured it would be a nice project to try and create a "cooler looking key" for that time I am riding with the key in.

Well, first of all, it's a cool car.

But the main reason is that I needed a car I could "logically" run the key through.

The front grill of the '65 Ford Mustang Fastback had almost the perfect height and width to accommodate the key. A little bit of filing here and there for it to have enough clearance and it was good to go.

I had to figure other things out like the key extension/retraction mechanism, but to be honest, I just "winged it" and adapted it on the go.

The main idea of having a screw through the key was already there, as was cutting a groove in the base for the screw and key to be able to move inside.

After that, it was a lot of chopping, cutting, filing, fine tuning, trial and error until it was done and working.

It went well, but that is not what people usually do with their die cast customs.

There are different levels of modifications that we will talk about in the next section.

But now I will talk about some modifications I did, in ascending order of complexity (not counting the Mustang).

This is the first "tier", and it involves opening a car, removing the wheels, putting new ones in, and closing the car.

Some I did include a Ford Escort RS2000 from Hot Wheels (mainline) that was so good in the details, that just with a wheel swap it looked like a Premium line one.

Other cars I did simple wheel swaps to include:

And I am probably forgetting some!

I don't know if this was some sort of manifestation or what, but when I moved continents, I brought with me an Audi TT Roadster mk1 from Matchbox.

The car was sort of banged up and I didn't really care much about its use since I didn't have any specific memories with it.

Then I decided to restore it.

It was mostly to try stuff with a car I didn't care much about at the time. To see what I was capable of. If I ruined it, tough luck.

But for no good reason other than "I like the look of it more", I decided to do a spoiler delete, on top of some repainting and wheel swapping.

Over a year later, I ended up owning a non spoiler Audi TT mk1.