Finally a VW Topic!

[freebeard]

VW buses worth $150,000? Ho-hum. But in 1/64th scale?

www.cnn.com: This might be the most valuable Hot Wheels car in the world

That $150,000 model, for instance, was a failed experiment. For 1969, Hot Wheels' second year on the market, designers wanted to include a California-style model of the famous Volkswagen bus. Hot Wheels' original version of the Beach Bomb had lifelike proportions scaled down to 1/64 size and tiny surfboards sticking out the back window.
It looked great, but the bus had serious handling issues. The whole point of Hot Wheels was that they weren't supposed to just look cool. They were supposed to go fast and whip around that little orange plastic track. But when it was blasted out of the Hot Wheels Super-Charger -- a miniature garage with spinning rubber discs that slung the cars out at high speeds -- the tall, narrow bus flipped over.
Some prototypes were made with heavier bottoms to try to overcome that tipping problem. Pascal's is one of those. About 144 prototypes of this particular model were made and only about 50 are known to survive today, said Pascal.

So he's saying there might be [as many as] 94 of these floating around somewhere.

[Piotrsko]

Depends. When my wife worked there the test floor (4 th?) would get samples that sometimes made it outside, or in the employee store there were weird one offs, or finally, test samples given to general public for testing that never got returned. The 144 number should be an estimate. Fifty ish seems low, but remember most test toys ended up trash. My wife had stuff that would be worth a fortune, but it sadly ended up in the LA landfill off Mulholland

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

I remember seeing something about those in a documentary about Hot Wheels' history, and IIRC they're rare because they didn't fit the track sets as the surfboards would drag at the ramps.

[Piotrsko]

The surfboards fell out always, anywhere, and were pretty useless unless stuck out of the top hole which meant it got stuck on everything. It wouldn't stay on the track in curves or whoopdees. That one in Barbie pink is rare mostly because of the color (inside Mattel joke). It also had redline wheels which means test toy.

Look carefully, that is a waterboxer so it wasn't '72 more like '80. I had a split window no surfboards but that might have been a johnny rebel or corgitoy

[freebeard]

Disagree. The Wasserboxer sold from 1982-1992 as the Volkswagen Type 2 (T3).

This appears to me to be a low-light (1968-71) or Early Bay.

[Piotrsko]

I was torn between posting this here or in the aero section. Was behind it in a Grant's Pass fuel stop.

Hmmm new update in software won't let me rotate, sorry.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

This one is a '95

[freebeard]

justacarguy.blogspot.com: I wish more advertising would use humor and entertainment

[Piotrsko]

So how many mistakes did you find freebeard? I get 10, but not sure if the rack is placed properly, or if it's supposed to be a 19 window.