Read time: 5 min.

I’ve loved Hot Wheels for as long as I can remember. Honestly, what kid doesn’t? Lately, I’ve rediscovered the YouTube channel baremetalHW, where battered old die-cast cars -Hot Wheels Redlines, Matchbox, Johnny Lightning, and even more obscure brands like Siku and Corgi- are carefully restored back to life. Watching those tiny survivors get a second chance has stirred up a few die-cast memories of my own. Here’s one of them. 

I’m kicking around writing a personal post like this every so often. Maybe twice a month? If you don’t like it, I’ll probably stop- Ted

I’ve had plenty of time lately to take a deep dive through baremetalHW’s channel since being out of work has had a way of opening up my schedule. It’s been a while since I’ve shared an update on my employment situation, but I’m in month four of the job search. My severance has long run out and, since then, the experience has been intense and humbling. I suspect I’ll have more to say after everything resolves, but for now I’ll stick to this smaller story.

In the aftermath of my parents divorce when I was three, my little family didn’t have much. After a stint when we lived with my grandparents, my mom, my siblings, and I came back home and squeezed into a small duplex. Mom slept on the living room floor so the rest of us could share a pair of bedrooms.

Every once in a while we’d make a trip across the road to Walmart. If I was lucky, I got to pick out a Hot Wheels car. That was a real treat! At five or six years old I was already obsessed with classic autos, so one day I chose a blue ’37 Bugatti -Mattel’s recreation of the elegant Type 50 actually built between 1931 and 1933. For a kid given ninety-two cents and an imagination, that diecast roadster might as well have been the real thing. 

As I plucked the coupe off the pegboard, an old man with a cane shuffled past and pointed at the car in my hand. “Hey!” he said with a grin. “I used to have one of those back in the day!” I figured he was talking about the real car and am now sure he was pulling my leg, but it was the coolest coincidence. I couldn’t wait to get that little blue Bugatti home and put it to work.

Our duplex had an eat-in kitchen with a laminate floor, which made for the perfect raceway. A massive china cabinet stood near the hall to a little half-bath. The moment we got home, I tore the package open and set my new Bugatti loose across the floor. It shot off beautifully only to roll straight under the china cabinet. Not just under it, unfortunately- way under it. The car rolled to a stop far beyond my reach. 

Seemed to me, the only way to get it back would have been to move the cabinet. Unfortunately, it weighed about a metric ton and my mom decided against the idea. Just like that, my blue ’37 Bugatti was gone. I’m not sure why I didn’t dig a yardstick out of the closet and swipe it out, but I didn’t. Kids are stupid, I guess! 

The little Bugatti sat in the dusty shadows for two years, hidden beneath that china cabinet like buried treasure. Then came moving day. I wasted no time the second the cabinet was wrested out of the kitchen. I dove down and snatched my long-lost car as soon as the cabinet cleared out! The kitchen was off-limits as the rest of the furniture moved out, so I did what any other kid would do and took the little car outside to race it in the road. 

The Hot Wheels car turned into a rocket. For a split second it looked glorious as it sped down the pavement like the real Bugatti must have done on some European road! Then it ran into a pebble, hit the edge of the curb, and disappeared straight into the dark mouth of a storm drain. 

After surviving two years trapped beneath a china cabinet, my long-lost Bugatti lasted all of about ten seconds back in the wild before vanishing again- that time, for good.

I’ve thought about that little Bugatti more than once while watching those restoration videos. The cars on baremetalHW’s channel arrive in terrible shape -paint gone, metal pitted, wheels missing- but with enough patience and care they roll again like nothing ever happened. Sadly, mine never got that chance. Somewhere beneath a Muncie storm drain, my tiny blue roadster is probably still sitting in the dark. It’s a casualty of childhood enthusiasm and dubious racing conditions.

For a kid whose family didn’t have much, a one-dollar car could become a priceless artifact: a race car on the kitchen floor, a treasure lost beneath a china cabinet, a rediscovery on moving day, and a ten-second blur of glory down the street in Keller West. Hot Wheels’ ’37 Bugatti didn’t last long in my life, but it left a story. It was weird visiting the site of the disaster nearly thirty years later! I’ve thought about picking another ’37 Bugatti on eBay, but my short-lived take remains a better reminder.