A toy car isn’t a real car, but toy cars can have some snazzy paint jobs out of kilter from reality, except where Polestar is concerned.
If you’ve ever played with toy cars, particularly Hot Wheels cars, you know how crazy toy cars can look. Big flashy paint jobs, shiny colours, and fun looks, the likes of which might appear in a video game aren’t foreign to Hot Wheels, and the matchbox cars were from a time when before video games.
Now that games like Forza Horizon are here, you can splash crazy coats of paint on a digital car and see what it looks like for real, before driving it around a virtual course and racing your little heart out.
But it’s still not real. You can’t turn a matchbox car paint job into a real one, unless of course you have huge wads of money to potentially waste.
Polestar, however, is giving designers a chance to see what a matchbox car could look like in real life, this year launching a design contest to let people create a real life Hot Wheels-inspired car using a Polestar EV.
It’s something Polestar is launching in collaboration with Mattel, the makers of Barbie and, of course, Hot Wheels, with a challenge to let anyone with an idea and some design skills translate a Hot Wheels-styled car into a design that will become one and a toy.
The idea is something a little bit different, but not out of kilter from the sort of design and invention competitions we see from time to time, such as the Dyson Awards, which are made to be more about helping people.
Polestar’s challenge is a little different, and instead of encourages designers to splash some art on a design for a real Polestar vehicle, while also looking at the interior, as well.
The winning entry won’t just be made into a car, but also a Hot Wheels miniature toy car, set to be sold the world over. The latter will likely be very affordable, even if the former may not.
“Dreams have the power to inspire and transport us beyond what we thought possible,” said Maximilian Missoni, Head of Design at Polestar. “This is a chance for all participating designers to really push that Polestar envelope and let their imagination run riot,” he said.
Polestar’s unique challenge is focused on students and professional designers, with initial design submissions closing in March, giving keen individuals not much time to get cracking. This story was published on a Friday, so it might be just the project to sink some teeth into for a weekend.
