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If you already knew or not, before Hot Wheels officially releases a diecast vehicle into their mainline sets (these are the normal/regular cars that HW makes every year), they produce several (or quite a lot sometimes, as in today’s case) of a particular car.
These sample cars are known as “factory test run” or “prototype” cars.
If you look at a few of them side by side, you’ll often find slight variations between them all.
Such as different rims (color changes or chrome vs paint, spokes or solid designs, etc.), tire styles (rubber vs plastic, redline or whitewall or blackwall types), interior color changes, perhaps even slight graphic alterations.
Sometimes there will be a (black ink) stamped number on the roof, or on the bottom of the car, indicating sample or style numbers / versions at the plant.
Below, we show you numerous types of these “test run” samples.
They are all from the latest Hot Wheels car, the purple Buick GNX (to be released in the 2026 regular main line set of HW vehicles).
[ SEE the actual released car here: Hot Wheels Purple Buick GNX ]
These sample cars are offered by a few different vendors (all located in Malaysia, where the Mattel factory is at).
They are almost always listed (on ebay), as auctions, with the highest bidder owning it.
The hammer price is generally in the $25-50 range (shipped to you).
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Based on these 7 examples (with 3 pics of each vehicle below), we think HW made the right decision for the final rims, with their 8th choice (shown in the released version’s post, link above).
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