Restoring cars is hard enough work. Depending on its state, a car restoration can take months, sometimes even years to complete. I’m not here to talk about road-going cars, though. I’m talking about car restorations of a different thing entirely, the kind that Redline Restorations, a company that’s known for restoring actual classic vehicles, did for a 1968 custom Chevrolet Camaro. Except that this isn’t a full-size Camaro; it’s a Hot Wheels version.

Before you start snickering at the sight of restoring a toy car, indulge yourselves in the idea because it’s actually pretty awesome. You might even think that there are a lot of similarities between restoring a real car and a pint-sized, die-cast version after watching how Redline Restorations does it. As you can see, the ’68 Camaro has definitely seen better days to the point that “beat-up” feels like an understatement when describing its condition. That doesn’t seem to be a problem for the restoration company.

It starts off by disassembling the car’s body in order to separate it from its chassis. From there, the body is stripped of its original paint, similar to how it’s done on real cars. Things take an interesting turn after that process as both the body and chassis of the Hot Wheels car are dipped into a beaker with 75 percent phosphoric acid in it. This specific process is done in order to remove the rust collected in the car. Once that job is finished, the body is repainted and reconnected to the chassis.

It’s a relatively straightforward process, but seeing the whole thing play out is still pretty impressive. From a car that looked like it had just come off a late-night bender at a junk yard, this Hot Wheels version of the 1968 Chevrolet Camaro now looks like it’s just been taken out of the box. Check out the video and see how the whole process unfolds from start to finish. Who knows, you might be inspired by it and start doing it yourself on your Hot Wheels. Just make sure to handle that phosphoric acid very carefully.

Redline Restorations0}

Read our review of the 1967 Chevy Camaro Z28/SS/RS

Read our review on the 2016 - 2018 Chevy Camaro

Read our latest news on the Chevy Camaro