Hot Wheels Colors


     What color is that car of yours? Everyone or is that no one seems to know for sure! Every time you look people are comming up with new imaginary names to try and describe their car or just make them up to enhance their sales. Seems Mattel was not very good about telling everyone what the colors of their toy cars were, except for a short time at the very beginning, so everyone just makes them up as they go. Almost 50 years afer they came out collectors still all argue with each other constantly about what color a car is. Your here reading this because you want to know what the real colors are so read on and we'll make sense of it all here and on the following pages.

     Lets start with a little bit of general paint information. Mattel burst these cars onto the scene with very bright glowing paint colors painted in whats called Spectraflame. Spectraflame is a fairly clear candy style paint that one can see through to the surface of the car underneath. Scine you can see down to the surface the color is also effected by the quality of the shine or finish of that surface. Variations in that surface color greatly affect what you perceive to "see" as the color of that car.







The J Cars     It was the technique of using honeycomb-sandwiched aluminum which motivated the J car. This technique used half inch honeycomb aluminum panels which had to be bonded together. The first J car would use this honeycomb aluminum to form a central tub chassis similar to the GT40's. The final specification for the car adhered to the Appendix J regulations for race car construction.


The first J-car, called J-1, was completed in March of 1966. It's chassis, which weighed 86 lbs, supported the fiberglass body and 427 engine. J-1 made its first public appearance at the LeMans trails that year. It weighted 2660 lbs which was nearly on target with the 300 lb weight reduction Ford was looking for. At such a weight it was not surprising that the J-Car took the fastest time at the trials. Unfortunately, the J-Car was sidelined for the rest of the 1966 season to help the GT40 Mark II's effort.

After a weak performance at Daytona, where transmission problems plagued six Mark IIs, Ford reluctantly continued the J-Car program in preparation for Ferrari's 330 P4. They worked on chassis J-3 and J-4 in preparation for
Sebring. During this time, Roy Lunn, Chuck Mountain and Phil Remmington worked on the J-cars extensively. They created a new body for the chassis which incorporated a longer front nose, a Can Am style tail section and a new roof line to accept a rear window. During this transformation the J-Cars officially became known as the GT40 Mark IV.




Carroll Shelby stands with a red 1967 Ford GT MKIV

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