Turn Any Hot Wheels Into a Sweet Little R/C Drift Car With This Kit
This kit could be one of the best gearhead gifts for this holiday season.
If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve played with a Hot Wheels die-cast car at least once in your life. Many of us have memories of holding a Hot Wheels car in our hands and pushing it around, but what if we told you there’s a way to drive your die-cast cars for real?
0:00 / 0:00
We found these sweet kits by DKE Builds (via TheDrive) that promises to turn any 1:64 scale die-cast car into a mini R/C drift car. It does take a little bit of know-how and some soldering skills to complete. However, if you or your intended gift recipient is comfortable with that, they could have a sweet little drift car to play around within in a matter of an hour or so. (Or you could buy the pre-assembled version from DKE, too.)
The kit requires separating the die-cast’s body away from its chassis and snapping it onto the custom chassis from the kit that will have the battery, motor, and receiver on it. From there it just needs to be paired with a remote, and its off you go.
The pre-assembled chassis and electronics package goes for $134, or if you want to do even more of the work yourself you can get the unassembled kit for $61. The pre-assembled kit just needs the body of your choice to finish it off, while the other kit requires components like a transmitter, battery, and so forth.
DKE says its kit will work with any 1:64 scale die-cast car, so if you have a Matchbox car instead of a Hot Wheels car you should be fine. The catch is there is currently a 2- to 4-week lead time for ordering, so if you want to get it in time for the Holidays, you may want to look into this sooner than later.
We already ordered a kit with our eye on our Rotsun Hot Wheels. We’ll let you know how it goes!
Andrew Beckford’s passion for cars started as a middle schooler when his friend Richie explained how an internal combustion engine works. He was bitten by the bug and the rest, as they say, is history. He dug deep into the tuner scene and eventually wrote for Turbo Magazine, Import Tuner, Super Street. He covered car shows, feature builds, and reviewed racing games for those magazines in addition to covering motorsports including Formula Drift, Indy Car, and F1 for his personal blog. Eventually Beckford joined MotorTrend to cover the daily automotive news beat. Besides being a gearhead, Beckford has been a gamer since the ’80s and is a huge fan of the arcade racing games of the ’90s like Daytona USA, SEGA Rally, and Ridge Racer. Beckford’s a movie buff as well, especially comic book films from DC and Marvel. When car culture crosses over with gaming and entertainment, rest assured Beckford is aware of it. In addition to serving as a consultant on a “triple A” racing titles, he’s reviewed major racing games such as Forza Motorsport, Need for Speed, Gran Turismo, F1, and more. He’s also interviewed blockbuster directors including Steven Caple Jr. (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts) and Neill Blomkamp (Gran Turismo). His biggest profile to date was with Robert Downey Jr. on his love affair with cars and his show Downey’s Dream Cars on MAX. Beckford’s profile of Downey Jr. was the first print cover story written by an African American in MotorTrend’s history. Along with KJ Jones, Andrew Beckford also heads up MotorTrend’s celebration of Black History Month by spotlighting diverse voices in the automotive industry and motorsports. Beckford’s first car was a 1982 Nissan Stanza affectionately named “Stanley” by his late mother.
Read More
