To me, there's a certain satisfaction to be gained when you can customize one of your favorite diecast pieces and paint it in a color of your own choosing. That way, it makes it special, and in a sense, a limited piece. Depending on the amount of detail you want to add, you can make them look quite eye-catching! Now, my skills at customizing are not even close to the level I've seen being turned out by some people out there, but I still find it something I enjoy doing. Above is a Summer Toyota Celica LB Turbo GR.5. I had a beat up old one that I acquired long ago and attempted to make it look nice again. Below, you can see my less than stellar attempt. But it was one of the first ones I ever repainted:
Recently, I dug it out and redid it again. Below you can see a transitional state it took before I applied the final coat of paint to it. There was a point that I almost left it with the chrome look because it looked kind of nice:
But, I went on and finished it later and it turned out like this:
Some of the other castings I have customized is one of my favorite Hot Wheels vehicle called a Letter Getter. It is basically a big panel truck with lots of room for the sponsor's logo on the sides. This makes it a nice choice to customize as you can put whatever writing on it that you want. I chose "Kodak" for this one because I like to take pictures and use a lot of Kodak film:
I chose "FedEx" for the side of this one simply because you see them everywhere:
Here's an old piece I had that was all but ready for the trash. I decided to bring it back to life and fixed it up. Here is the shiny, new truck it became:
One of my other early attempts at repaining a toy car was this Hot Wheels Gun Slinger. Originally, it was Army green and had a gun. Well, I had long since lost the gun, so I repainted it black. But, I did keep the Army theme by applying a star decal to the hood:
Another bodystyle I like is station wagons. My parents had one when I was little and ever since then, I've loved them. I've had three real ones of my own since becoming an adult! So, anytime one is released in 1:64 scale, you can bet I try to get one. Here is a Hot Wheels 8 Crate, based on a 1955 Ford station wagon that I started to customize. When it's finished, it will be two-tone, white over red. But for now, here's what it looks like:
Other station wagons I've customized is one put out by Matchbox, an Audi RS6 Avant:
And what some might consider to be a station wagon, a Volkswagen T2 minibus, also by Matchbox:
Matchbox also makes a Dodge Magnum station wagon model, in two varieties. Here is one of them that I am going to stripe and make into an Illinois State Police car:
Here's another Police vehicle I made, only it started out as a Hot Wheels Highway Patrol car and became an Arizona Border Patrol car:
Here is a Maisto Chevrolet Camaro Concept that I painted anodized blue over a chrome base. It is one of the first cars I ever drilled out the rivets and took it apart the right way:
A Hot Wheels '65 Mustang Fastback that I painted gloss black and used the old basic wheels they used to use:
I started customizing this Zee Volkswagen Beetle to look like Herbie, The Love Bug. All it needs are the racing strips and numbers to be finished:
Here's an old Lindberg Line Hertz Truck that I painted black long ago. It's essentially a 1:64 scale model car, so it was easy to take back apart and paint:
My most recent custom is a Hot Wheels Cadillac Seville. They only made it for a couple years and in a couple different paint schemes. For one release, they used the big, rubber tires known as Real Riders. I decided this one needed to be a different color, I had stripped it down to bare metal waiting to make up my mind what color that would be. The other day I decided what I wanted, so I finished painting it and putting it back together. This is how it turned out:
So, customizing your own cars can be quite fun. It can take as little or as much time and effort as you wish to put out and at any level of effort, you can come up with some nice results. As I said, I'm not really very good at it, but I think they turn out to be some great looking customs that I'm proud to display!
1955 Pontiac Star Chief - Release 6
