Hot Wheels’ rollicking, 15-stop, nationwide Legends Tour reached its climax at the 2018 SEMA Auto Show, where Luis Rodriguez and his 2JetZ open-wheel jet car took home top honors in the competition. As part of his prize, Rodriguez will get to see his creation immortalized in Zamac and turned into its very own 1:64 scale die-cast toy. The 2JetZ was chosen from more than 3,600 custom cars entered in the Legends Tour. It was selected, in part because of its design and originality. The Hot Wheels version of the jet car is expected to hit toy stores sometime next year.
This is the dream, isn’t it? Everyone who has ever played with Hot Wheels cars can attest to the dream of one day seeing a car they made get turned into a 1:64 scale toy. I had that same dream myself growing up. Unfortunately, my Pizzamobile that runs on salami and cheese is probably never going to win a competition like Hot Wheels’ Legends Tour.
Fortunately for Luis Rodriguez, his own intrepid creation not only caught the attention of the likes of Jay Leno and legendary Hot Wheels designer Larry Wood, but it also outlasted more than 3,600 custom creations to win the exclusive competition. Rodriguez’s 2JetZ open-wheeled jet car was selected by Mattel after the culmination of the 15-stop nationwide tour.
That’s where Rodriguez was announced as the winner for creating what can only be described as a custom car that was built to have its own Hot Wheels alter ego. It features a jet fuselage body, complete with a yellow tinted canopy covering the cockpit of the car. A Toyota-sourced 2JZ power plant sits behind the wheel and is said to be capable of producing more than 600 horsepower. While it would’ve been nice for the car to have its own jet nose, it does feature a smorgasbord of decals and graphics, the kind that you normally see on actual fighter jets. Overall, it’s a sick-looking creation, and the fact that it has that much power and weighs just 1,600 pounds speaks to the kind of capabilities it has once its unleashed on, say, a drag strip.
It probably won’t have any trouble holding its own on a drag strip, but still, we’d like to see it for ourselves.