For our second installment of Modelo En Bofus, I’m already stepping outside the box to take a look at something unconventional: this is a deeper look at one of the more recent Hot Wheels fantasy cars.

I picked this one for two reasons: first, because it has a design element that particularly appeals to me, and I’ll get to that in a minute, but beforehand, I’ll discuss the second reason why I’m focused on this one, and that’s its name.

Any of y’all who read this blog know that I grew up a Matchbox collector, and we all know that Mattel won the “toy car wars” and now owns the Matchbox brand. So, you may be aware that in 1971, Lesney Products & Co Ltd was attempting to out hot-wheel Hot Wheels by making a series of their own weird fantasy cars, and many of these were arguably worse than the weird schtuff that Hot Wheels was coming up with at the same time. One of the cars they released in that year as #1 in their 1-75 series was called the Mod Rod.

It was a bizarre and ugly car, an example of Lesney trying and failing to do something they never should have done, but ugly though it may be, it’s also a part of my childhood. I have several versions of this car in my collection, and it’s a piece that has some particular interest for collectors like me as it is the only car (that I am aware of) ever released in the 1-75 series with red wheels, although the red-wheeled version is a fairly rare variation: most releases have conventional black wheels. While it is a generic enough name that they can’t be accused of plagiarism, it is interesting to note that Mattel chose to reuse that name on this Hot Wheels release. Then again, even if we did call it plagiarism, we couldn’t very well call it theft, since they own the Matchbox name and all of its intellectual property anyway!

So, this modern day Mod Rod made its first appearance in 2019. It was designed by Dmitriy Shakhmatov, a Ukrainian who worked as a Hot Wheels designer from 2014 to 2023. One wonders why anyone would ever leave such a job, but during his nine years at Mattel, he was quite prolific, responsible for the design of dozens of cool cars. This, IMHO, was one of his best.

The combination of the wraparound glass with the classic de-fendered hot rod shape and stance is interesting: if someone had described it to me verbally, I would’ve shaken my head and said it would never work, but surprisingly enough it actually does: no one would ever mistake this as a production car, but as a one-off custom, it looks like a viable operable car, which is one of the things that makes it interesting.

However, the car’s most interesting feature, IMHO, is what’s powering it upfront! If you look very closely at the engine of this car, you might notice something different than what you usually expect to see powering a Hot Wheels, hot rod: this is not a blown big block, V8! Rather, it appears to my eye to be a very deliberate model of a Chevrolet/GMC “Stovebolt” inline 6!

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog – principally in this post – I have owned several vehicles powered by this engine throughout my life, and I have a real affinity for them. Although many hot rodders whiff at 6-poppers, and the customizers of the day considered them to be boat anchors, today’s “retro rodders” and “home-bilders” have developed a real respect for the “Stovebolt,” and I’ve seen some really cool ones built with really impressive vintage speed equipment. I myself had a Fenton dual carb manifold for one of these topped with two Carter YF carburetors back in my own hot-rodding days. I bought that piece for installation in the ‘56 Chevy 210 2-door sedan that I owned at the time, although I never got around to doing an engine rebuild on that car before financial disaster struck as a result of the 2008 crash and forced me to sell most of what I owned. The plan was, though, to keep the inline-6 in that car. That made my friend and mentor Ken Leib apoplectic, because he was one of those very old-school hot rodders who thought of Stovebolts as boat anchors, but to this day I still think it would be cool to build one up like the one shown right here on this model! It’s true that even with speed equipment there’s a limit to how much power you can get out of such a primitive long stroke pushrod engine, but everyone knows that what these power plants lack in performance, they more than make up for in durability and longevity, and that’s worth a lot, even to a hot rodder! That’s why it made my own personal list of the 10 greatest automotive engines of all time.

For that reason alone, I thought the Mod Rod was worthy of a closer look, and like all modern day Hot Wheels, it’s been re-issued so many times in so many colors that it’s almost impossible to keep track of without a spreadsheet. I myself have acquired six variations of it, including the original release in slate blue and my favorite one, the satin black version with red scallops. There’s also a reverse color issue in metallic red with black scallops, and one of the more recent issues in mint green with black scallops is one of the best looking hot rods Hot Wheels has ever made! The most recent issue is metallic black and yellow, with an Ed Roth-style monster face painted on the side and the name “Broken Promises” stenciled across the doors with a brush… an excellent recreation of the past, making it look like it just drove out of Roth’s own studio back in the early 1960s!

It’s little vintage touches like these that make modern day Hot Wheels so cool to Kustom Kulture fanatics like me, and they send a message to us that there are still some cool people out there making decisions even in a massive company like Mattel, and they’re still paying attention to what we like and want! There’s still a few of us “old skool” guys out there!

It may be too much to hope for that the Mod Rod will undergo a transformation into a real car the way the Twin Mill did some years ago, but it sure looks like it could be real if someone wanted to build one… Any of you genius fabricators out there thinking about taking that project on? 😃

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, this is Billy McKloski from Palm Springs, reporting for NBC Sports of America
Twenty seconds to the start of the thirty-first Formula race on a hot, sunny afternoon here in California…”

Neve will I forget the scorching summer of 2011, one of the hottest on record in Colorado. That was the last year I was still living in a beautiful vintage building on Capitol Hill in the heart of Denver, as things were beginning to take a turn for the worse and the city was headed down the tubes. I could feel the changes around me, as the atmosphere on the streets was detectably less festive – less fun – than it had been in years prior: the recession from the 2008 crash and its aftermath had taken hold by then, and people across the land were hurting. I was no exception.

Coming home from work that summer to a place without air-conditioning (in years prior I had never needed it) there was a struggle to keep cool, and late night glasses of sugary absinthe made with icy water helped mellow out the atmosphere. This was the year that I rediscovered a band from the past that I had always been peripherally aware of but had never really explored, and that band’s unique music has, ever since, been the score for my hot summer nights at home. And that band was…

To many North Americans, Yello’s career began and ended in the 80’s with their biggest hit “Oh Yeah,” the one track that everyone knows thanks to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The real story is infinitely deeper and more interesting: Yello have in fact been making music for nearly 50 years! First formed back in 1978, they released their first album, Solid Pleasure, in 1980. Their most Recent? Point, released in 2020! Now that, dear readers, is staying power!

The band’s history is cosmically weird: formed in Switzerland by sound technicians and “tape men” Boris Blank and Carlos Perón, the group got off the ground with the addition of vocalist Dieter Meier, who’s resume reads like that of a Bond villain: the playboy son of a multi-millionaire banker, a professional gambler, golfer, semi-pro chess player, and savvy investor, Meier was also an artist and a filmmaker. Since Peron left the band in 1983 never to return, Meier and Blank have soldiered on as a duo ever since, releasing an album every few years to a total of 14, with nearly countless singles, remixes, videos, side projects, promotional pieces, and numerous other performance art curiosities for good measure, and they have also worked with many famous musicians and guest vocalists through the years. Though few music fans have ever even heard of them, their influence on modem music is far and wide!

This combination of obscurity and eccentricity is what makes the band so cool! They’re utterly unlike anyone else. Blending suave Euro-electronic rhythms with a wink of absurdist humor, they crafted a sound that’s equal parts avant-garde, cinematic, and downright funky. Their music thrives in contradiction—robotic yet sensual, minimalist yet lush, catchy but weird as hell. Boris Blank’s meticulous sound design builds surreal sonic worlds, while Meier’s deadpan vocals add cryptic charisma, often sounding like a secret agent reciting beat poetry in a smoke-filled lounge. Classic tracks like “Call It Love,” “Vicious Games,” “Drive/Driven,” and “The Rhythm Divine,” to name just a handful of my faves, are all the proof you need of this!

This got me to thinking… I can’t just listen to one band all summer! My winter playlists are miles long with hundreds of artists and thousands of songs, but what else is out there that will fit the bill for hot sultry summer nights? What else goes with Absinthe and gasoline? What other band sounds like this?

Lounge music is an obvious fit, such as the type personified by Martin Denny and many others so notably collected by the Rhino Records “Ultra Lounge” series of CDs, and its modern practitioners like Combustible Edison. But lounge isn’t quite enough; I need something a little more offbeat than that, something a little more… weird.

Enter “THE DARK LOUNGE”

Now if you’ve even bothered to read this far, you’ve probably thought this is starting to read a lot like that post about “Jesus Built My Hot Rod” and Wiseblood from back in early March, and you may be shaking your head going: “What does any of this have to do with Thunderjets?” Well dear readers, let me welcome you to Drag City After Dark, and a look at how Wardglenn changes a little at night. I’m coining a new phrase today, kidz, one that I’m certain has never ever been used before, EVAR! I’m making it up right now, so I get credit for it, see? On hot summer nights, the noise and fumes from the track mix with the cigarette smoke and the Four Roses bourbon to turn the businesses along Bear Valley Road and even the VIP grandstands of the track itself into the DARK LOUNGE! Think of it as an adult playground for gearheads looking for a buzz when they’re off the track!

Dark Lounge is:

– Yello’s “Desire”

– Art of Noise’s “Moments in Love”

– Hooverphonic’s “Eden”

– Portishead on quaaludes

– Barry Adamson scoring a cabaret where everyone’s pretending not to know each other

And who else? Here’s what I’ve come up with so far…

• Cibbo Matto

• Leonard Cohen

• David Lynch & Thought Gang

• Grinderman (A Nick Cave side project)

• Tuxedomoon

and rounding out this list, a band I’ve been into for years and speaks to me most in the summer…

• Ladytron

How’s that for a good start? Got your motor runnin?”

🥃 The Dark Lounge Manifesto

A Statement for the Cool, the Crooked, and the Beautifully Bored

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I. This is music for the mirror.

Not the one you look into to check your hair.
The other one—the one behind the bar.
The one that shows you who you really are after your third drink.

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II. Dark Lounge is not chill.

It slinks.
It prowls.
It whispers sweet somethings in languages you don’t speak.

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III. The beat doesn’t drop: It slides.

A slow descent.
Like a cocktail olive settling at the bottom of a glass you didn’t order.
Like velvet drapes in a room no one leaves.

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IV. Lyrical themes may include:

• Love that never happened
• Cities that don’t exist
• The moment before the crime
• Nightclubs on the ocean floor
• Dancers made of smoke
• Regret in a suit

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V. Voices should be whispered, crooned, or intoned.

Auto-tune is an intruder.
Anger is gauche.
We speak in riddles here.
If someone shouts, they get escorted out—gently, but permanently.

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VI. Instrumentation may involve:

• Rhodes pianos
• Flanged guitars
• Fake strings
• Real tape hiss
• Reverb that smells like old perfume
• Synths with European passports
• The ghost of a saxophone that died in 1982

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VII. Influences include:

• Yello (the prophets)
• Art of Noise (the technicians)
• David Lynch & Thought Gang (the oracles)
• Hooverphonic, Portishead, Barry Adamson (the priests)
• Morcheeba & Sneaker Pimps (the dreamers)
• Tuxedomoon (the architects)

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VIII. Dark Lounge is best heard…

• In a red room
• After 11:00 PM
• With a drink that burns a little
• Alone, or with someone you used to love
• While it rains—but not outside. Inside.

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IX. It is a mood, not a movement.

No merch. No festival.
Just the feeling that you’re not supposed to be here, but you’ve been here before.

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And now, back to the heart of the matter: Drag City Raceway! As always, let’s go to the track!

🏁💄Drag City Nights: The Velvet Trackside Tapes

• After the engines cool and the sun drops behind the bleachers, the track belongs to a different kind of crowd.
• The VIP lounge over Pit Row turns the lights low.
• Someone’s spinning Yello’s “Get On” on vinyl through weathered Altec Lansing monitors.
• There’s a man in a white racing suit who hasn’t spoken all night—he’s been watching the door.
• No one remembers inviting Shirley Bassey, but there she is; who knew she was a racing enthusiast?
• Behind the dragstrip, someone’s mixing drinks with ice stolen from the medical tent.
• And down by the garage bays… someone’s playing “Grinderman” on a boombox like it’s a dare.

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In other words: Dark Lounge might not be part of the daytime Drag City canon—but it’s definitely what plays after the gates are locked and the moon is up.
It’s the after-party, the backroom, the Track Manager’s private tape stash.

The Race is Ended for the night, but the music is just getting started! Pour yourself a drink and one for your lady too, and maybe buy a round for your favorite driver and his mechanic!

Let me know if you’d like me to craft a short “Drag City Nights” story vignette around this vibe, dear readers! Could be a standalone epilogue… or the start of a very strange sub-series!

And with that, you now have the prologue to our new series of story posts! The first official “Lorelei” chapter drops next week, so stay tuned!

When you think back on all the movies you’ve seen throughout your life, aren’t there a few real standouts? Ones that left a mark, ones that you can’t forget? For me, Se7en is one of those films; this year marks 30 years since it was 1^st released, and its influence is still being felt today; it has inspired countless other movies and TV series, and it remains one of the darkest, most shocking, and most psychologically unsettling movies I’ve ever seen. It also has that absolutely iconic line as that twisted ending approaches…you know the one…

Today’s “Out of the Slot” post has nothing to do with the primary topic of this blog; sorry, readers, if that bores you, but once in a while I do want to write about something other than my 1:64 slotties and die-casts, and today I’m covering another object of interest in my collection of “curious goods” that I hope at least some of you will find interesting…

So, nope, nothing related to toy cars or racing today, but something that’s still a fascinating part of history! I hope you enjoyed this little detour, dear readers, but if not, then never fear: we’ll be back to our primary topic soon enough, in one form or another!

As I have mentioned before, sales of Hot Wheels cars have been steadily increasing over the past decade. That’s not because today’s kids have any interest in cars. While it is true that Mattel has expanded the HW name into new and creative areas to appeal to today’s youngsters by integrating the series into other genres, the majority of sales increases are driven by the copious and never-ending series of special editions, collector series, and nostalgia reissues. So it’s no secret where most of these sales are really coming from!

If I were a Mattel executive looking at the long-term and thinking about the future, that might keep me up at night, but since I’m the consumer in the exact demographic who is buying all these toys, I couldn’t be happier at the stunning variety of 1:64 diecast cars that are currently available!

And so, we come to another impromptu trip to the infamous Colorado Diecast, where I stepped in last Saturday afternoon to find the shop’s 50 Cent bargain bin packed to the gills, loaded more deeply than I had ever seen it with thousands upon thousands of cars! I sifted through those piles, and within the space of an hour had bought well over 50 cars! Adding in a few high dollar premiums, I got out of there for just around $100 with almost 2 additional cases full of additions to my collection!

I’ve mentioned this before too: this is getting out of hand!

Or…is it? Because, hey, it’s the proverbial kid in the candy store: faced with piles of cool toy cars for half a dollar, how could any gearhead stop? The expense is so low and the fun factor is so high that self-control becomes a minor afterthought: there’s just too much cool stuff! As my baskets fill up and my shelf space disappears, all I can think is: WHY NOT?

Of course, that doesn’t mean that I want to be making significant alterations and changes to the diorama every time I come home with a new pile, but it’s also true that a few changes here and there are just irresistible! So, here’s some highlights of just a few of the most recent purchases and their effects on the environs around Drag City.

And so, what about you, dear readers? What are you adding to your collections these days? Surely not everybody has a incredible store like Colorado Diecast in their backyard, but are you able to resist those aisles at the big box stores when you walk into them to pick up the things that you need? Or do you find yourself making detours to that toy section with the same little sense of excitement in your chest that you felt when you were five years old, and throwing a few extra goodies into your basket before you check out?

I don’t know about y’all, but as long as Mattel and other toy companies keep making the kinds of things that I like, I’ll never stop… For the simple reason that, at these prices and these sizes… I don’t have to! And neither you do!

Keep collecting, and have fun!

So…what happened? The 249th birthday of the USA has come and gone and no action at Drag City?! Not a peep out of your humble blogger? What gives?

A fair question to ask, considering that for the past five years, Independence Day has been cause for a huge celebration at the track, with a full-blown muscle car race ending in a massive fireworks display. There was my last post on June 24 – a Tuesday, even – and then…silence. No notice of a hiatus even!

What has happened in the time I’ve been away from my blog for nearly 2 weeks is difficult to talk about, and perhaps I shouldn’t: some things are too personal for public consumption, and no one who peruses these pages to read about vintage slot cars or classic 1:64 diecasts is going to be interested anyway. So, suffice to say that over the last couple of weeks, some ongoing crises occurring in the life of someone dear to me finally reached “critical mass” and began to spill over into my own life.

It’s very difficult when someone that you love is suffering, and one of the hardest things about it is knowing when you can help, and knowing when there’s nothing more you can do, and that you are at risk of the powerful tractor-beam of their vortex pulling you down with them. I’m sorry to say I reached that point over the last two weeks, and the aftermath of the decisions I had to make has been weighing on my mind ever since.

More than this, I shan’t say: it’s not an appropriate topic for this blog; suffice to say that the turmoil all this has caused has kept me from both the track and this blog for many days. I’m happy to say that I did get an invite to a good house party on the 4th, and that was followed by watching several urban and suburban fireworks displays from a 3rd floor flat, so, I managed to have a good time in spite of it all. Sadly, I’m going to spend the rest of this holiday weekend working in the office, as the drama I’m referencing here has caused me to fall behind on some projects there.

In short: there hasn’t been any action at the track, and there isn’t liable to be for at least another week or so. I’m still cleaning up messes and trying to get things back on the shelves. I’ve got a little bit of diecast news to share, but other than that, Drag City is going to be quiet for a few more days.

Bear with me, dear readers: life stuff can be disruptive, but Drag City isn’t yet a memory: the muscle cars will roar again, I promise…