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| Big Blue as it appeared on Ebay. |
With the purchase of a life size Beetle my interest in smaller collectible die-cast Bugs has increase. Like many small kids I collected Matchboxes and Hot Wheels as a kid. Just the last few months I've gotten more into it. I even came across people on YouTube who restore or customize old Matchboxes and Hot Wheels. Especially the Matchboxes, although I like many Hot Wheels I seem to to be drawn to Matchbox stuff a lot more. It's what I had the most of as a kid.
The restoration of them looked fun and interesting. Not too much different that other models I've made just on a smaller scale. I like restoring something back to life. I've bought a couple of Matchboxes with intent to restore them. One is a 64 Chevy Impala Taxi and the other was a VW Beetle drag racer called Big Blue.
Big Blue was found on Ebay and is model that came out with a few different paints schemes with similar body and chassis. It also had names like "Dragon Wheels" and "Hot Chocolate".
The one I got was in rough shape but all the paint was scratched and missing in many places. A front pillar was missing. The orange windshield was loose and standing legs were mostly missing. The wheels were also misaligned.
Being a VW fan I thought this one would be an interesting one to restore although I'm going for a custom paint job inspired by my life size Bug. In my next installment I'll go over how I got started.
