November 20, 2024
Luc Gagne
Here is the “ The Hare “. It’s a future Hot Wheels. Indeed, you will soon see its tapered forms in reduced format in a display of these popular miniatures. Because this black car designed in Chile won the 7th edition of the Hot Wheels Legends Tour at the end of a final presented virtually on YouTube on November 16.
Being the big winner of this international competition, the La Liebre will therefore be immortalized in the form of a 1:64 scale Hot Wheels miniature, which will be sold around the world.
Born in the “land of poets”
La La Liebre — hare in Spanish — is the fruit of the imagination of Giuseppe Casagrande and Maurizio Moschini, two enthusiasts who founded the Cars and Coffee Chile in 2012. This Chilean club brings together collectors, pilots and other enthusiasts living to the rhythm of the “harmonious roars of engines and the artistic beauty of complex mechanics”. This way of describing the members of this club on its website is a nice reminder of the nickname often attributed to Chile: country of poets — the country of poets!
Horses to spare for gauchos
With the help of their team, Casagrande and Moschini built their car from an Argentinian-made 1968 Ford Falcon chassis that had been modified by Baufer Garage, a former local engine manufacturer. We added a tubular structure and a roll bar covered with a fiberglass bodywork inspired by the Le Mans cars which proudly displays the club crest.
To power this sports car whose mass peaks at 900 kg, they opted for a modified Chevrolet 350 V8 to transmit 600 horsepower to the rear wheels through a five-speed Saenz 910 gearbox with straight-toothed gears.
Around ten finalists
The La Liebre was one of ten finalist cars presented during the virtual world finale broadcast from El Segundo, the location of Mattel’s Hot Wheels brand headquarters located about 30 kilometers southwest of Los Angeles.
In addition to the Chilean car, among these ten finalists, there were four from European countries, one from Dubai and three from the United States; creations that can be discovered in this video:
International event that forgets Canada
The Hot Wheels Legends Tour was created in 2018 as part of Mattel’s Hot Wheels 50th anniversary celebrations. The popularity of the event was such that its organizers chose to repeat it the following year. After all, in addition to sparking interest in these miniatures among buyers, young and old, the tour was an excellent source of inspiration for finding the “next Hot Wheels”!
Initially limited to US borders, the tour also quickly took on an international scope. So much so that the 2024 edition was first contested in 13 countries where so-called regional finals first took place: the United States, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland and even Dubai. Curiously, since 2018, Canada seems to have been kept away from this competition…
Fans of Hot Wheels miniatures will remember that the award-winning vehicles during the first six editions of this Tour of Legends were: the 2 JetZ (2018), the The Nash (2019), the Pontiac Firebird 1970 (2020), the Volvo P1800 Gasser 1969 (2021), the Autozam Scrum 1992 “Texas Toot” (2022) and the Mazda MX-5 1990 “Chimera” (2023).
Photos : Mattel
About the author
His parents say the first three words he uttered were: mom, dad and… Volvo. We don’t know in what order he said them, but everything suggests that he was predestined for a career in the great world of automobiles. It was through the media that he approached it. Since the 1980s, he has edited various periodicals, from the VAQ Classic Car Magazine (his “school”) to AutoMag, including the bilingual magazine Formula 2000, without forgetting Le Monde de l’auto and Auto Journal. At the start of the 21st century, he wrote for Le Devoir, as well as for Auto123.com, AutoFocus.ca, Auto.Vtélé.ca and the excellent industry site AutoMédia.ca. Currently, he can be read in the pages of AnnuelAuto.ca and in L’Annuel de l’automobile, a book he helped launch in 2001.
