As you have hopefully noticed by now, I write about cars, and thusly probably like cars quite a bit. You’re an astute little bugger aren’t you? Anyway, in accordance with my being a petrol-head, I had a Hot-Wheels collection as a child. On many weekends I’d take over the entire living room with tracks and attach the starting point to the second floor banister. Luckily, my mother likes to read and that doesn’t require much space, so I was free to claim vast tracts of prime lounging real-estate for the sake of my races. How this hobby has defined how I view cars after the jump.

Like most kids who had a collection of toy cars, one in particular was my favourite. For a while it was the one that could be stood up on its rear bumper, and then became a robot with a gun, but my favour soon shifted to the blue Corvette Stingray.  It looked the coolest out of all of my collection, and seemed to win races the most often, even though it was a bit lighter than the many of the other cars. To this day, that is my favourite hot wheel.

I love the exaggerated arches over the wheels, the over-bite on the front, the way the roof-line merges smoothly with the horizontal line running the length of the car, and the aggressive stance that the slightly higher suspension in the rear gives. But mostly, I just love the exaggerated wheel arches. The other day, I was talking about cars that I think are beautiful, and I realized that this little piece of die-cast metal defined what I think is pretty in a car.

I love the Maserati GranTurismo’s design. I love the slightly exaggerated wheel arches, the over bite, the way the roof… you get the point. The same goes for the Ferrari 458 Italia, and of course, real Corvette Stingrays.  Hell, it’s probably why I feel like I should like Corvettes, despite their numerous short-comings in the not-spinning-off-the-road-and-dying-in-a-horrible-fireball-department. If they still looked like this I’d probably end up kicking the bucket by way of horrible fireball.