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This is concerning the most recent diecast Hot Wheels has produced, the purple colored ’87 Buick Regal GNX.
Rarest of the rare, factory test run pieces, AKA diecast prototypes, are pretty rare simply because there’s usually just 1 produced in the specific design.
Now granted, generally, there’s more than just 1 single car made, as Hot Wheels makes several versions of test run pieces before they choose the exact vehicle style they want to mass produce into their mainline sets.
So while there may be, for example 5 (or 3, or 10), or more test run pieces for 1 specific upcoming release, all of those will be different designed cars, using different wheels, different paint colors (exterior or interior), or slightly different graphics/tampos on them.
Any of which makes them truly a 1 of a kind diecast car (albeit similar to other prototypes of the same run).
Rare doesn’t always equal valuable though, as we’ve seen plenty of these factory test run cars sell for about $20-25 each (shipped to your door).
Most of the time you can see the progression in these prototype cars (from test pieces to final examples) if more than 1 test run car is available.
The paint colors will be the same on all these vehicles, just the wheel designs will be different.
Sometimes however, especially in the case of different paint jobs, and ones with no tampos on them, it’s hard to tell what specific HW car these test run vehicles are being produced for.
The descriptions the sellers use (like “’87 Buick Regal GNX”) provide a bit of a clue to which specific new diecast car they represent, but the last few HotWheels vehicles that have come out all are named “’87 Buick Regal GNX” with just a different paint/graphic scheme on them.
Below are some prototype diecast cars from the recent “2026 Purple Hot Wheels” that just came out.
Easy to tell on all these test runs, since the purple paint job is present on all of them.
[ SEE the factory chosen car from these prototypes here: 87 buick regal gnx diecast ]
[ there were also other prototype pieces (at least 7 besides the below) made for this particular diecast car, SEE them here: purple hot wheels test run diecast cars – it looks like they were deciding on wheel rim choices since that’s the main difference between all of them]
We’ve mentioned this before, but prototypes usually have some sort of identifying marks (code numbers) on them (revealing them as test runs), either on the roof, or the base (bottom) of the car.
But not always, as is the case with car below with the green wheels.
For the cars (far below) with no tampos on them, none of them have test run codes on them either (making them harder to determine if they are actual prototypes or someone just did a wheel swap on them).
All of the diecasts shown have sold (on ebay) in the $25 range, shipped (excluding the new US customs policy where buyers now have to pay import fees for items from outside of this Country).
There use to be only 1 seller for these pre-production type cars, but lately we have noticed 3 or 4 different vendors for them (all located near the assembly plant in Malaysia).
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THESE CARS ARE COMPLETE, WITH ONLY WHEEL CHANGES:
(3 pics for each example car)
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THESE CARS HAVE NO TAMPOS (GRAPHICS) ON THEM, WITH RIM CHANGES AS WELL:
(3 pics for each example car)
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