1:18 Hot Wheels Power Rage (TEKU Custom)

My first fully scratch built custom 1/18 Hot Wheels (Slingshot), felt like a proof of concept more than anything else – I needed to see that I could actually take these projects to completion first before I really started dreaming bigger (ha, ha…)

I was between a couple different Acceleracers for the second car – I really almost went with Reverb since it’s arguably the Acceleracer car of the series that won it all, but I haven’t built a JDM-style street-tuner car in damn near a year by now, and that sort of stuff is typically my bread and butter (one glance at my 1/24 catalogue will prove that).

So, Power Rage it was! Yes, it could’ve also easily been Synkro, since they’re styled very similarly, but I think at this point I’d like to follow through on a 1/18 Vert Wheeler collection first.

Power Rage is probably one of the most grounded and least fantastical cars to come out of Acceleracers – rather than looking like an exotic like Chicane or Reverb, it’s clearly meant to take cues from classic Japanese-styled sports coupes. It’s even powered by a tiny 2.8L boosted 4-banger! Classic tuner things.

Recall when I was first doing the R&D for Slingshot, I had discussed how 3D printing your own models isn’t as easy as just finding any old 3D file online and hitting print – there are specific parameters that a file needs to be designed around in order for it to be remotely printable, and with Slingshot I had paid up to ass to contract a 3D design firm to remodel my initial Slingshot file into something even mildly workable as a printed piece (and even then, the final print had a ton of fitment issues out of the box and wasn’t optimized – I had willingly cut a lot of corners in the design process since I was trying to spend the least amount of money possible in the 3D phase).

I really wasn’t willing to pay that much for 3D design work again just to get a half-baked design that I would’ve still had to make massive changes to in the real world, so thankfully the Acceleracers community came to the rescue – enter our savior ValkenVugen!

I’ve known ValkenVugen to be a staple in the AR community for as long as I can remember – I think I was first exposed to his work on DeviantArt many years ago. Fans today will know him as the mastermind and director behind the incredible Acceleracers fan film that debuted this year, The Fog Realm.

As if the Fog Realm weren’t impressive enough to prove his 3D modeling chops, Valken has a huge portfolio of incredible 3D model work. Thanks to the exposure gained from publishing the 1/18 Slingshot, we were able to partner up for an agreement on this next project: ValkenVugen would provide the 3D model for Power Rage, including making the whole thing printable, and in exchange I’d build him a finished copy of the car.

The best part about working directly with a 3D modeler who’s also a fan of the series is that I don’t have to worry about explaining things vaguely or worrying about whether or not they’ll understand what the car is supposed to look like and how it’s supposed to come together. It’s also very nice being able to work directly with the modeler on piece breakup and not have to worry about being nickel and dimed for every little bit of 3D work, the way I was with the 3D design firm I was working with previously.

The prototyping phase with the core model file took months on its own – Valken would send me test files to test print in FDM first to see what worked and what didn’t, and we’d eventually go back and make changes to the 3D file based on the results.

It, uh, did not always go smoothly. Lots of failed prints and things we were able to learn from – namely, 3D printing will always require a minimum thickness for all panels and walls, and figuring out what that is for parts like the headlights and hood that we want to be thin on purpose will always be a compromise.

I had specifically requested that the model be split and built like a traditional plamo model car – that is, with a hollow body “shell” that would slot and fit over a chassis “plate” that included sealed wheel arches. This format of building cars is just what I’m most comfortable and familiar with, since it’s how all my 1/24 plastic model cars are built. A huge credit to ValkenVugen for both understanding my needs as a builder and actually modeling it all out to such an impressive degree. Having paid out of pocket for these services before, I don’t take the work that goes into 3D modeling lightly.

After months of prototyping, we’re finally here! It’s real! It’s physical! It’s resin!

Oh how beautifully crispy resin printing is. This is with all the parts just taped together for a mock-up, but everything fits together very satisfyingly well. In love with how he gave me the head/taillights as separate pieces to make for much easier painting.

Mini me, mini you. Like Slingshot, the 1/18 build is based exclusively on Power Rage’s on-screen movie proportions and details, which vary quite a bit compared to the 1/64 diecast (the two-post wing is one of the easiest differences to spot, among other proportional changes).

Lots of resin support pins on the rear bumper, this was clearly printed facing upwards – no biggie, easily sandable.

The body shell is very satisfyingly thick and sturdy – I don’t feel like I’m at any risk of accidentally breaking any normally delicate areas, like the A-pillars.

The firewall was a last-minute addition that I had requested be added into the body shell model, since I do plan to build this as a full open-motor kit. Having the firewall added in during the modeling process seemed like something easy and simple enough to do that would save me from having to glue in a big piece of pla-plate to make my own.

Chassis plate – nothing fancy, with no undercarriage detail to speak of. I had winged the spacing and size of the front wheel wells a bit – praying that I’ll still be able to squeeze an engine in between them while still giving me enough room on the wheel side to fit turning axles.

Windows printed in clear resin – they look opaque now, but that’s nothing some sandpaper and elbow grease won’t be able to clear up. Super glad the front and rear windshields were modeled together as one piece that’ll glue in under the roof – little build-ability things like that please me greatly.

So, I did mention that I wanted to build this as an open-motor display car, the way I do many of my 1/24 JDM cars. As shown earlier, Power Rage is canonically powered by a 2.8L turbo i4, with power (presumably) going to the rear wheels. I considered my options – an SR20 felt like the obvious choice, but I had just built a big turbo SR20 recently in my S15 model, so I wanted something a bit different.

Any of the famous Honda 4-bangers would have worked too, like any K-series or B-series engine that everyone raves about in their mom’s Civics, but those are all almost exclusively transverse engines meant for FWD use. I didn’t particularly feel like getting a K24 just to have to source a separate transmission for it and line it all up together – how about a RWD-application Honda motor that already had a transmission attached? Enter MotorHelix’s 1/18 F20C model.

I could’ve resin printed an engine and put it together myself, but why would I do all that when these pre-built pre-painted MotorHelix crate motors are available? They’re surprisingly inexpensive for what they are – only about $30 for each model, in the exact scale I needed them in!

I can’t quite shove it in yet, but just from what I can tell here…she’ll fit!

Since I’m converting this motor from N/A to turbo, we won’t have any need for the original exhaust manifold/headers and heat shield assembly. Thankfully it pops right off.

Resin printed Hiroshima hairdryer along with a custom printed turbo manifold.

Lol maybe I should’ve asked Valken to make a cutout in the firewall for the transmission tunnel while I was at it

The downside of all the resin for this print being so thick is that I basically can’t do any trimming and cutting with a heat knife – it needs to all be taken down by a dremel, which is a huge pain when it releases a ton of toxic resin dust during the process.

Anyway, the motor does indeed fit between those fender wells, big turbo and all! It’s a bit of a tight squeeze but I should still have enough room to run my turbo plumbing later.

While I was cutting with the dremel, I also went through and opened up the side exit exhaust ports and the hood vent. Kicking myself a bit for not just asking for these parts to be opened up during the 3D modeling process, I can’t imagine it would have been difficult to create the openings.

The main features I wanted to make sure I implemented on this model were opening panels – I already mentioned the hood would obviously open to display the engine, but I was also committed to making Power Rage’s fancy vertical scissor doors happen.

In the same spirit as the canopy hinges I used on Slingshot – if it moves, you can bet I’m using LEGO!

Looking at the way the LEGO hinges work, you’d think it would be pretty straightforward, right? Hinge moves, door goes up, right? Not so much. Like real scissor door kits added to street tuner cars, the door itself can’t actually clear the body shell opening by just going straight up – it gets caught on itself and the bottom edge collides with the side skirt area.

This throws a bit of a wrench into things. The door needs to swing open normally slightly first, before gaining the clearance to then hinge upwards. Problem is, I don’t have the room in the tight area between the firewall and engine bay to install a reliable secondary hinge mechanism – the single vertical LEGO hinge is already intruding into the engine bay more than I’d like as it is. I suppose this is the consequence of trying to have it all – vertical doors and an opening hood with engine bay display.

My system solution is ultimately just…a slightly wider hole in the firewall that the LEGO hinge will stick into via a friction fit, which will allow the hinge to “swing” outward slightly in the hole and then open upwards. I’ll then add stoppers on the engine bay side of the firewall to prevent the hinges from slipping out of the openings. It’s not even a real double-hinge system, it’s just a slightly loose friction fit for the outwards movement. Janky? Yes. Does it work? Well…yes?

It’s only staying up at this angle because I kind of have the front corner of the door wedged into the A-pillar and front fender corner. This, uh, will not do once it’s all painted up and there’s a sideview mirror in that corner. But we’ll cross that bridge later, for now – doors go up!

Using some different LEGO hinge pieces for the hood hinges. I’d rather they be closer to the outside edges of the hood, but there’s now no room to fit them there since that space is currently being occupied by the vertical door hinges. Oops.

The LEGO hinges are quite bulky as they are, and I have no need for the studs, so all that is being ground away to make the mechanism as low-profile as possible. The hinges are also toothed so they move in a ratchet fashion, but I didn’t have need of that for just an opening hood, so I also ground the gear teeth down smooth so it became a relatively loose smooth-moving hinge.

This is the general idea of how the hinges will all be mounted, everything builds off the firewall – I’m counting my lucky stars once again that I had the foresight to ask Valken to add the firewall in before final printing.

A bit of a problem I noticed very quickly when I tried to actually move the hood like this though…is that the hinge pivot point itself is actually a bit too far forward, and thus moves the hood itself back when it opens up, causing a gap between the hinge top and the hood itself. I suppose issues like this are why hoods are supposed to be hinged at the very far corners of their edges.

My attempt to fix this problem is to cut valleys out of the firewall and install thin pla-plate backings where the holes are. This will effectively move the LEGO hood hinges back a couple of millimeters so the pivot point is now flush with the firewall instead of sitting on top of it. I would’ve just mounted the hinges behind the firewall instead if I could, but the LEGO design doesn’t quite allow for that without the actual joint sticking up and above the firewall cutoff.

It works now! The problem now becomes that the hood is digging a bit into the windshield space when it’s raised, but I’ll deal with that problem when I get to the windows lol.

The last gimmick I wanted to make sure I could include in this build was steering front wheels. I was so upset that I couldn’t fit a steering mechanism into Slingshot due to all the things happening at the front axle with that model as it was, so I’m determined to make it happen one way or another with Power Rage.

At 1/18 scale, LEGO Technic joints are actually perfect for this application – especially for simple systems like a turning and pivot on a single axle. I dug all these parts out of my spare Technic parts bin, and shoved the resin hub onto one of them to make it all work together.

I’m not bothering with running a connected steering column or anything – each wheel will only be able to move independently. I also learned that using a double jointed steering pivot allows for a lot more freedom of movement versus a single pivot the way you’d think a steering axle works, hence why there’s that two-peg swing piece connecting the assembly.

The rear axle is comparatively a lot simpler – just stick the hub on and it spins! Front and rear assemblies are then glued to the chassis base with epoxy after I marked their locations by testing wheel fitment.

With the gimmicks and moving parts squared away, it’s onto the interior work – and as you may have noticed, an interior was not part of the 3D modeling or printed parts in any way. So we need an interior donor – enter Funline’s 1:18 Muscle Machines 350Z!

I wasn’t being particularly picky with my interior donor – I knew there wasn’t going to be any way I’ve be able to match Power Rage’s interior 100% to what it was in the films, so I was happy to just get whatever I could as cheaply as I could to steal a dashboard and door cards from, which happened to be this used and abused Z off eBay.

With the body and seats peeled away and tossed, this is what we’re left to work with. I knew the trunk would come with the sick speaker/sub/amp/nitrous setup, but I wasn’t 100% sure if I could implement it to Power Rage’s cabin until I had it in-hand.

First order of business was the door cards, which were surprisingly close. This is all coincidental – I didn’t plan for the door sizing at all, but the fact that it all nearly comes right together tells me that I at least scaled Power Rage correctly to 1:18 scale.

The entire rear trunk section was originally attached to the main cabin as one piece, so I had to cut that entire back section off and trim the cabin until it fit inside Power Rage’s body shell. The dash especially required some heavy cutting down on the sides to get it narrow enough to fit with the doors closed.

As cool as the 4 giant nitrous tanks were, there was no way I was going to be able to fit them in the much smaller Power Rage cabin, so I opted to cut that section out entirely, then fit the trunk section of the Z directly up to the back of the main cabin.

With the body shell fitted over it all and…it works?! I’m shocked this works as well as it does, considering how I’m completely winging all of this and praying the trunk of a convertible Z will fit to make up the rear cabin shelf of my fantasy Hot Wheels car.

With the main pieces established to fit, I’m going into the Z trunk setup and cleaning it up a bit – we’re getting rid of the little chrome air tank(?) and infamous Z trunk strut bar completely, and moving the amp downwards so it doesn’t cover the main sub speaker anymore.

Looking much cleaner like this, and I enjoy all the speakers being very visible under the rear window now. I did have to trim the back of the center console armrest slightly to get the amp to fit under and behind it.

Of course we’re not keeping the crusty old seats from the original Z – putting in resin printed 1/18 Bride replacements courtesy TK Diecast.

Confirmed it all fits!

Ironically, I think I got unintentionally close to Power Rage’s original interior design with the rear shelf speakers, but I’m deliberately choosing to go with more JDM-style racecar bucket seats compared to Vert’s wider and less sporty looking seats.

Accidentally chopped the door sills down too far so I’m having to add strips of pla-plate back in to fill in the sides of the tub a bit, teehee oopsies. This is what happens when you’re prototyping all of this fitment from the ground up.

It’s a small thing, but I decided to swap out the original shifter on the Z console with the crisper looking one that’s actually included on the Motorhelix F20C model. I wasn’t so crazy that I was actually going to try to match the shifter on the transmission model up to the actual opening in the dash though.

First coat of deep blue down on the interior parts. This color should match Power Rage’s animation interior pretty closely.

Printed my own TEKU infotainment screen decals at home the same way I did with Slingshot. The Z interior also has a ton of space for random gauges – thankfully I have no shortage of extra gauge face decals from my 1/24 cars I can throw on.

After a flat coat over the blue, adding in all the extra little interior panel details in by hand with brush paints. I decided to keep the original Z’s patterned metal footwells instead of flocking with carpet, since the metal sheet pattern was already there.

The seats will be a matching blue with the rest of the interior, but I’m using some new Bride patterns for the cushion inserts – all these parts come courtesy TK Diecast.

Interestingly, this Bride pattern sheet isn’t actually a water slide decal sheet – it’s real printed cotton! It comes on adhesive backing so it applies just like a regular sticker, but the cotton surface material gives it that soft genuine seat cushion look and feel, which I find really neat since I’ve never used any sort of material like this.

To apply, I’m using masking tape to trace the shape of the cushions on the seat first, then using the tape as my template to cut the insert shapes out of the adhesive sheets.

The effect does look surprisingly authentic, despite how thick the cotton sheets are. The thickness of the sheets won’t allow it to conform around edges or bend much, unlike water slide decals, so I had to paint the sides of the thigh bolsters black before application.

As far as I can recall, Power Rage is the only TEKU car to sport a true steering yoke instead of a traditional round wheel. It must steer like an F1 car!

That was the exact thought process that led me to find an F1 steering wheel model online that I could get custom resin printed to my specifications. I believe this is a Mercedes F1 steering wheel from the late 2010’s. It won’t be an exact replica of Power Rage’s canonical steering wheel, but the general shape and idea of it being a yoke is still there, including the screen in the middle.

Adding a bit of styrene tubing to the back of the wheel to create a bit of a custom hub to make sure it can mount properly on the 350Z steering column in the car.

Going for maximum accuracy by printing the actual steering wheel display as seen in the films via a screenshot, turned into a water slide decal for the center wheel screen. I’m using my usual Testors home grown inkjet waterslide decal system here to print my own custom decals as needed.

It’s obviously not a one-to-one accurate replica of Power Rage’s actual steering wheel, but like with the whole interior, it just needs to be approximately close enough to get the same vibe across.

As I was buttoning up the interior I realized that you’d be able to see the sides of the dash being hollow when the doors were opened and pointed up. This is a byproduct of me having to cut the dash down so far on the sides to be able to fit it in the cabin with the doors closed – the original setup in the Z was actually wider than what it is now in Power Rage.

This was an easy enough fix by tracing and cutting out some pla-plate filler plates to glue into the gaps.

Finally onto the fun part – first coat of white laid on the main body!

Except…I clearly didn’t do as good of a job prepping the print before paint as I had thought lol. Layer lines are still visible on the roof, and I didn’t even get all the support pins on the rear bumper. Back to the grindstone before another layer of white.

Some miscellaneous pieces painted – wing in gloss black, grille and exhaust ports in silver.

Hood painted black before carbon decal work.

Interestingly, as far as I know, Power Rage’s hood is the only part of any Acceleracers car that’s actually supposed to be exposed carbon fiber. This is an animation-only detail too, since the 1/64 diecast only ever had a black hood, and no carbon patterning. It’s barely even visible in the movies, in very slight blink-and-you-miss-it shots where you can make out the weave pattern on the hood.

Windows sanded from 400 grit up to 800 grit, then hit with clear coat – the final result is very acceptably clear, but unfortunately I’m still left with little resin artifacts (air bubbles I think?) in the piece, which is what those little white specs are. Even with aggressive sanding I couldn’t take these artifacts out, since they seem to be embedded in the part itself, not on the surface. Unfortunate, but it’s just the reality of printing clear resin sometimes, I think.

The clear blue that went on after the clear helps hide it somewhat, but not completely. I’m praying that it doesn’t look too distracting once it’s all assembled.

Finally getting to the decal work feels so surreal after how long I spent prepping all the parts and putting the gimmicks together. As usual, these decals are designed and printed by TK Diecast through their custom decal services. They’ve produced all of my large scale project decals, from my first 1/18 TEKU Deora II to the Wave Rippers Deora II I built much later.

The custom decal process typically takes months since TK Diecast only produces custom batches once every quarter, so 4 times a year roughly. Every design is also vectored from the ground-up by TK Diecast in order to print the most high-resolution decals possible – we don’t just hit print on the water slide printer for any random graphics we find on Google Images. This is why my 1/18 scale decals always look 4K crisp, even blown up at such large scale – they’re truly created bespoke for this application, rather than just resizing the 1/64 liveries.

Credit does go out to JC Squared, our patron Acceleracers community public relations spokesperson, for being gracious enough to provide the base graphics for Power Rage’s livery, which TK Diecast used as reference for the large-scale vector files so we didn’t have to create everything from scratch.

With most of the body and interior squared away, we’re finally going to start seriously looking at motor work. Step one was to paint the valve cover Brilliant Orange, since I didn’t think the original red Honda cover would go with the rest of the car. I had briefly considered doing it in blue, but thought the orange would work better as a contrast color in the bay.

Annoyingly, I couldn’t figure out how to separate the valve cover from the rest of the motor on the Motorhelix model without damaging parts, so I had to do it the old fashioned way masking the cover off.

I’m adding piping into the intake manifold opening in order to create a peg that my scratch built intercooler piping can then easily slot into.

In order to space the motor properly in the engine bay, I also added a styrene pipe in the oil pan to serve as the “stand” for the motor as it connects to the floor of the bay. Obviously we’re not going all in with a detailed subframe, motor mounts, etc down there, the engine is just going to float over the floor of the bay.

We’ll need a big fat front mounted intercooler right behind the front grille (as is canon in Power Rage’s film appearances), so I had originally ordered a set of 1/18 intercoolers from Hobby Design, which came with very nice photo-etched parts. However, the slats in the Hobby Design intercoolers were a bit narrow and fine, and I found that the intercooler that came off my interior donor 350Z actually fit Power Rage’s aesthetic a bit better, so we’re going with those. Bonus, it came with two little oil coolers too! Not sure if I’m actually going to install those yet.

Standard resin radiators come from TK Diecast.

Painted and glued in! The intercooler has two weird dimples in it from the way it was installed in the Z – instead of going through the effort of filling them in I just turned the intercooler upside down and had the dimples facing upwards, where they’ll be covered by the front bumper anyway. Work smarter not harder.

I’m heating and bending standard plastic styrene tubing to build the boost piping connecting the turbo and intake manifold to the intercooler. I’ve done this so much for my 1/24 turbo builds that it’s second nature for me by now.

For the exhaust piping coming off the back of the turbo, I’m actually going to turn to an old trick that I had last used nearly 7 years ago on my Tamiya Subaru BRZ turbo build – this red sheet is actually adhesive-backed textured fabric that’s meant to be cut into thin strips to be used as racing harnesses. I’m cutting them a bit thicker and wrapping the exhaust pipe in it to approximate the look of exhaust heat wrap.

Looks funky in such a bright red, but hear me out.

Painted gold and it works! It looks more or less like exhaust heat wrap, no? I’m only doing this since at this scale and with such a front-mounted turbo setup, the exhaust piping will be highly visible with the hood opened, so I wanted to do something more with the piping than just painting it a dull silver or gunmetal.

Since a lot of the interior will be visible with the doors open and up, I decided to go in and paint the inside of the body shell black. The bottom of the roof will receive the same treatment after the windshields are glued in.

Side windows painted clear blue just like the windshields. Unlike the front and rear windshields that have a nice large glue-in point under the roof, these window pieces don’t have very friendly attachment points other than their own edges, so gluing them in will be a precarious task.

I really debated for a while on whether I wanted to build the Speed of Silence version of Power Rage or go with its initial appearance version in Ignition. If you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about with different versions, it’s just in the wheels and tires since Speed of Silence introduced the colored Drone-tech tires at the beginning of that movie, meaning all the human cars switched to their iconic colored treads.

I had built Slingshot with traditional black tires since it was destroyed in Ignition before our human characters ever even got access to the Drone-tech colored tires, but for Power Rage I figured I might as well take the leap of faith and go in on the blue tires. This is done with a base coat of chrome silver and metallic blue on top.

I know in the movies the blue is actually a much lighter almost neon-blue, but I actually prefer the darker clear blue aesthetic of the CM6 tires on the 1/64 toyline more. My metallic blue is a bit of a compromise of both.

Taillights painted satin black, then filled in with chrome and topped with clear red to achieve the look of clear red brake light lenses.

Longtime readers will know I like my meshes and vents. I typically use soft fabric mesh sheets for most of my vent and grille work, but I somehow found this metal mesh sheet in my supply bin that I have no idea where it came from, but it just so happens to work well for the scale I’m working with here.

Painted black before insertion. I do like the design of the rear bumper being vented at the bottom – this is a very animation-specific detail, since the 1/64 diecast just has the entire bottom half of the rear bumper a black metal piece that was part of the chassis.

I didn’t bother having Valken design clear headlight lenses during the modeling phase, since I figure they would be small and thin enough that I could make them myself with regular old 1mm plastic sheeting. It’s actually kind of hard to tell if Power Rage even really has headlight lenses, or if its headlight housing is just open and exposed.

My genius idea for making these lenses work without visible glue marks in the front is to actually cut them out with an integrated tab that slots into the headlight cavity between the housing and the body – this way they’ll be secure and I don’t have to worry about messy glue marks around the bezel of the headlight.

Finally onto the brakes. The hubs themselves are hollowed out with a LEGO Technic single pin connector socket glued in, which will in turn allow the entire hub assembly to just snap onto the Technic pins that are currently already glued to the chassis.

The rotor and caliper sets are, as usual, supplied from TK Diecast.

The TK Diecast brake rotor set actually comes with photo-etched metal rotor faces that glue onto the top of the resin vented rotor backings. The idea here is to combine the hub and brake assembles all into one, but my hubs are too large to slot into the rotors as they are – hence why I have to drill the middle of the resin rotors out until the hub mounting point is all but gone, then sleeve them over.

I did actually go back and confirm that most of the TEKU cars sport cherry red brake calipers on film (I thought they’d be orange or blue or something), and of course we’re adding a splash of clear red over silver for the center caps to replicate the iconic Acceleracers red dot in the wheels.

I was going to use Endless or 326 Power decals for the calipers since the calipers are actually 326 Power BBK units, but I found that I had a few leftover JT TEKU decals that fit nicely in the caliper face, so we’re using those instead.

Interior, chassis, and engine work pretty much wrapped up! A close up look now before the body goes over it all. Ironically this entire section of the car took way longer to put together than the main body – this build would’ve been so much easier if I had just built a RC car shell!

I didn’t add mirrors for my 1/18 Slingshot, and the 100% Hot Wheels Deora II didn’t have side mirrors either, but ironically Power Rage does sport side view mirrors in animation (but only in Speed of Silence, they are conspicuously missing in Ignition).

These resin Spoon aero mirrors are courtesy of TK Diecast once again, advertised as universal fitment. I’m drilling into them with a pin vise and adding a paperclip bit in to serve as my mounting rods.

It hurt drilling into the door once it was already set and painted – I’m completely eyeballing this mirror placement and just hoping that it’ll all line up and not look silly after all is said and done.

And there she is, said and done! I think I started working with Valkenvugen on the design and development of the 3D model in February of 2025 – it is now January 2026. Nearly a whole year in the making, from initial design development to finished model complete with all the bells and whistles I originally intended on.

How does it compare to its original 1/64 counterpart? I think the front fascia differences are the most notable differences to me – the droopy headlights on the diecast are not it. Really glad the design was refined for the animation models.

MODE FULL OPEN!!

The main reason why this project took so long is because I was insistent about making all these opening features a reality, without a really clear plan on how to do it – as you saw during the building phase, I was really figuring a lot of stuff out as I went along, like how the door hinges would work and fit along with the hood hinges in the same space.

The opening doors really help pay off all the work I put into the interior though – it’s nice to be able to see it all on display.

Speaking of on display – does this setup look like it could put out 410hp? Surely with a turbo nearly as big as the motor…

I deliberately referenced a ton of boosted S2000 shaved bay setups for this bay, since I really wouldn’t be adding a lot of auxiliary engine components or anything. In the end I went with nearly the bare minimum of what’s required in a shaved bay, including a brake booster/master cylinder setup.

I’ll concede the motor does look a bit small in the bay, but that’s less on the engine and more on the fantasy Hot Wheels nature of the design itself – like come on, those front wheel arches and fender wells are cartoonishly huge, which in turn will make the motor sitting between them look squished and tiny compared to how a real car looks. After all, the engine model itself and components like the turbo are properly scaled to be true 1/18, in real-car scale.

Gluing in the hood was also one of the last things I did on the build, so truly truly I wasn’t able to test the opening functionality until it was already all put together, and uh, I may have made a few miscalculations.

Remember during development when I mentioned that I knew the hinges were mounted a bit too far forward and not close enough to the edges of the hood, so it would clip into the windshield area slightly? I mitigated this for the most part by trimming a couple of millimeters off the bottom of the windshield, enough to allow the hood clearance when it opens (which is why it looks like it “sinks” into the bottom of the windshield when it’s open), but I had totally forgotten that there would be a dashboard there right underneath the windshield once everything was assembled.

This awkwardly means the back of the hood collides with the dash when it opens, and I actually have to open the doors and push the dash slightly backwards in order to slide the hood under it to allow for even the 45 degrees of lift you see above. I would’ve truthfully liked more angle out of the opening hood, but this is good enough to see the motor, so I can live with it.

One of my favorite details is how you can see the giant Hiroshima hairdryer peeking through the meshed hood vent.

Remember how I said I totally eyeballed the placement of the side view mirrors and just prayed that they would still work with the doors going up? It was a stroke of luck I placed them where they are, since they actually rest up against the fender with the doors up, and act as a perfect stopper to get a resting angle for the doors.

I had played with the idea of using magnets to hold the doors closed, but ultimately decided it was more hassle than it was worth since they mostly line up fine and keep themselves closed as long as you’re not handling the model sideways.

Somehow really happy with how the metallic blue tires turned out. I was really worried they’d look cheesy on a more realistic take for this car, but it seems to fit right at home, even if it’s not technically movie-accurate with the deeper blue.

Of all the mesh that’s all over the car, the front fender vent mesh was the most difficult to place, since it had to be in the middle of the vent – it looked off if I just glued it up against the opening in the wheel arch. Fun fact: the mesh there isn’t actually held in by any sort of glue at all – since the mesh is metal, it’s cut precisely to the size of the vent opening and shoved in there as a friction fit. You’ll never be touching that section of the car, so it’ll never fall out, right?

I’m ecstatic that the effort I put into the turning front axles paid off, even if I don’t actually get as much angle as I would’ve wanted – a little turn is better than none, after all. I’ve realized that the only way to really get more turning radius out of the front wheels is to downsize the wheels and tires slightly, or raise the fitment so it’s not so tight up against the fenders, but of course I’m not going to compromise my stance for the sake of functionality, who do you think I am?

I had actually ordered a Wave Rippers rear window decal to replace the Hot Wheels one that’s technically toy accurate, as a nod to Valkenvugen’s own take on Power Rage’s rear window spine, but ultimately decided against using it and decided to go with an accurate rear window spine interpretation.

I totally forgot to mention it during the build process, but yes these wheels and tires are the exact same TE37Vs that I used on Slingshot – and yes, I could’ve just as easily printed movie-accurate CM6s, but I consciously made the decision to give into my JDM-pilled hotboi roots, so of course my Acceleracers will always have chrome dishes and stepped lips.

My Vert is a dirty JDM hypebeast like the rest of us, with Bride seats, an HKS turbo, & TE37s. Next time I’m slapping a Voltex decal on the wing too.

So to get ahead of it because I know I’m going to get a ton of this – no, I don’t plan to build any more of these for future commercial sale – I’m not even sure I’d be able to source another Muscle Machines 350Z to cannibalize for half these parts anyway. These cars are and will have to remain passion projects, given how involved they are to put together.

The 1/18 family grows! What’s next…?