I have to think it gives Hot Wheels Designers a little sense of satisfaction when they see a reaction like the one given to this sneak peek:
I am sure you saw it, but how rad was the reaction to Hot Wheels doing a 90’s Volvo Wagon? Man how things have changed, and man how cool it is.
The Hot Wheels Design Team has been throwing out a few 2020 sneaks – happily beating the unauthorized leaks – and it definitely shows 2020 is expanding on where 2019 has gone. A wide variety covering an untapped era (the 90’s) in realistic replicas. The Subaru 22b, EG Civic, and now a Volvo 850.
I too did a double take when I saw the Volvo, and I quickly reached out to Designer Ryu Asada to get some background. Ryu send over another rad pic, and a little on how and why the Volvo was done:
From Ryu:
Sounds cliche but it was one of my favorite cars and it seems like it’s been neglected despite of the popularity of the car itself, so we decided to give some love from HW. I can’t be 100% sure but this might be the first Volvo in HW. If so, this is a breakthrough. We’ll see if we can bring more cool Volvos in our lines.
So even today I remember the 1st time seeing my neighbor’s cream-yellow 850R Estate parked really tight in his tiny garage in Japan. I’ve never thought station wagons could be cool until I saw the one. Shockingly good looking. Oh and it’s fast too. If I had to choose a station wagon, it’d be that, or 90s Legacy wagons, or Accord wagons, or…OK, I’ll admit I like many wagons. (In reality I had an IS300 Sportcross.) And it’s good know that HW fans tend to love wagons these days. Our team has been talking and looking at the 850 Estate race car for long time but never had a chance, until now. Some of the fans noticed that the image we posted on IG was inspired by the famous photo of the race car. They got it right. That’s the image we used on our board for our inspiration, and convincing to non-car folks. 😉
This casting is non-specific version so it’s technically not an R nor a race car, but we’re hoping we can maximize the deco variations with this one casting, non-race, or race versions. Of course we’re always expecting to see lots of hard-core HW fans to come up with their super cool customs too!
Yeah I think it isn’t an exaggeration to say collectors have become big fans of wagons, and this adds to a growing fleet of Hot Wheels estates. And half-assed research (looking on eBay) does suggest that this might be the first Volvo car done by Hot Wheels. Ryu has done a few Volvos before, all for Matchbox (C30, P1800, XC90), so this is not new to him. Maybe a Matchbox Volvo feature is in order.
Look for the 850 Estate in 2020.
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