My #Hot Wheels iD #Rip Rod finally shipped from Amazon, and I received it yesterday. I have to admit that I’ve been quite excited to receive it as I never like leaving any loose ends to a casting collection; and this is yet another casting that I collect. None of the releases have been particularly hard to find yet — even the regular #Treasure Hunt — so I was surprised its been a challenge to find this one at Target. Speaking of that, apparently the reason Target had this car before the Amazon “pre-orders” shipped was that Target had a 2-week priority window at the start of November so Amazon could not ship their pre-sales until after that. Still, Amazon doesn’t appear to have received the “endless allotment” of this car as it has with the other iD cars outside of the other store exclusives. No idea what is up with that at the time of writing this article, but you can always check the Amazon placeholder for the iD Rip Rod >> HERE.

Hot Wheels Rip Rod from the 2019 Hot Wheels iD / HW Greats series

Hot Wheels Rip Rod from the 2019 Hot Wheels iD / HW Greats series (on orange track)

Chances are, if you’ve attended or seen pictures from the Hot Wheels Legends Tour, you’ve seen that Mattel actually has a 1:1 scale (real) #Rip Rod in their garage. It’s actually a pretty unique car that garners a lot of attention at the tour stops.

Hot Wheels 1:1 scale Rip Rod at the Hot Wheels Legends Tour Event in Phoenix, AZ (September 2018)

What many collectors are probably unaware of is the story behind the Hot Wheels #Rip Rod. It was actually an engineering marvel by Ford in their attempts to build a direct-injection, 1.0L Ecoboost Engine. Teams of Ford engineers from the United States and United Kingdom ultimately created an extremely powerful engine is incredibly small. How small you ask? Well, apparently its small enough to fit into a suitcase. Check out the story of the Rip Rod in the video below.

Beyond the real car actually have a cool origin story, the car can actually perform. Hot Wheels has been known to make sure their 1:1 builds do just that, though I have yet to see any video of the Deora II performing any stunts. Though, the Deora II was built a decade earlier, so I digress…

In the 22-minute promotional video below, you can see some of the cars from the Hot Wheels garage perform — granted its staged, but still incredibly fun to watch. Towards the end of the video, you’ll notice the Hot Wheels #Rip Rod doing some pretty intense stunts fueling my curiosity as to how many of these 1:1s that Mattel had built. Some had to crash, right? We have also seen the Rip Rod make several promotional appearances since it first appeared at SEMA in 2013 and interestingly enough, its worn several looks which further that notion.

So why is it in my collection?

It really came down to the cool story and the performance aspect behind the real car, plus, it is fun to own the cars that Hot Wheels deems cool enough to have in their 1:1 garage. I’ve pretty much collected the #Rip Rod since it was first released in 2014, and like all casting collections, there have been some that leave more to be desired, in addition to the real doozies. My favorites include the original new model release in black & red from 2014, in addition to the #Hot Wheels Race Team one from 2015 and the new #Hot Wheels iD one — which I just added. What I really hope to see is this casting wear some bead-lock, off-road #Real Riders at some point as I believe those could really do wonders for this casting. Not sure if we will ever see that, but one can dream. So… as of now, this casting collection sits at nine.

Hot Wheels Rip Rod Casting Collection (Family Photo, November 2019)