This Canadian-restored Toyota might become a Hot Wheels

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“It’s crazy to know I’m representing a country at something,” says Kevin Huth of Windsor, Ontario. “I guess I maybe should have put more flannel in the interior?”

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As the Hot Wheels Legend Tour wraps up its final events for the year, one sole Canadian entry stands a chance at 1/64th scale immortality. The Tour, now in its fifth year, is a sort of rolling road show that travels from continent to continent, searching for the next big thing in small cars. This year saw stops from New Zealand to Dallas, Texas, and a single Canadian event in Windsor, Ontario. Which is where Huth and his 1973 Toyota Celica got their big break.

Getting a shot at having your own personal car turned into a Hot Wheels is, of course, a dream for any gearhead. “I was a huge Hot Wheels kid,” Huth says, “I’m still a huge Hot Wheels guy. It’s like, you learn to walk, but before that you probably get a little Hot Wheels car.”

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“It all started with, ‘what if Toyota went Trans-Am racing in the 1970s?’”

Huth’s dad was a Beetle owner, so he grew up wrenching on cars. Trained as a master technician with Nissan, his personal car history skews Toyota-centric. One of his first cars was a 1992 Toyota Corolla, one of those built right at home in Ontario. He later bought a more-vintage 1971 Crown, and previously had a 1977 Nissan 280Z that he modified. “As low as possible, as wide as possible.”

At 35 years old, Huth’s interest in 1970s Japanese machinery isn’t completely uncommon. The Japanese industry had to prove itself in the later 1960s and early 1970s but, to a generation, Nissans, Toyotas, and Mazdas were already pretty well-established. Start off with a Honda Civic as your first car, and soon you might be poking around an old Datsun at the local car show, eager to learn more. Japanese steel from the 1970s is highly prone to rust, but the appeal of any survivor is easy to grasp. They’re simple machines, generally rear-wheel-drive, and wild modification has always been part of the import car scene.

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The Toyota Celica from this era looked a bit like a shrunken Mustang or Camaro, but it was pretty basic underneath, powered by a durable-as-granite four-cylinder engine. This example, which Huth found on Craigslist in Washington state in 2019, was originally fitted with an automatic transmission. The custard-coloured base paint is original.

However, not much else is. Built to a concept of “Tokyo Trans-Am,” the Celica is now a distilled and pressurized version of the bare-knuckles era of Camaro-versus-Mustang on-track brawls. It’s been fitted with fender flares and a front air dam and rear spoiler, updated lighting, and a whacking great V8 under the hood.

We’ll get to the V8 in a second, but what sets Huth’s build apart and what possibly earned it a best-in-show at the Windsor stop of the Hot Wheels Legend Tour is the spirit of the car. For instance, when it arrived, the car had some scrapes on the side. Rather than repair them completely, Huth carefully hand-painted his striped racing livery to incorporate those scratches and some weathering effect. The Celica looks like an old warrior, fresh from the racetrack with some battle damage.

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The engine swap itself has an air of elbow grease and late hours in the home garage to it. It was originally a 5.3L V8 pulled from a Saab 9-7X (essentially a rebadged Chevy Trailblazer) then bored out and fitted with upgraded pistons, connecting rods, and headers. Now punched out to 5.7L and 500 hp, it’s a far cooler homebrew than some crate engine ordered from GM with a simple click of a mouse.

That engine feeds through the six-speed manual transmission of a Nissan 370Z into a Ford Explorer rear end, making this Celica a mismatch mongrel of parts. It just adds to the charm of the car. The Legends tour states that the winner should combine “Authenticity, Creativity, and Garage Spirit.” Huth’s Celica build does just that.

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And it’s also a very Canadian creation. The interior is as plaid as Red Green’s wardrobe collection – a Volkswagen pattern, not red-and-black check, but still – and there’s hockey tape on the hydraulic handbrake. The front spoiler has a “Remade in Canada” decal, and there’s a maple leaf on the roof. All we need is a “Just gonna squeeze past ya there, bud” bumper sticker, and this might be the most Canadian racing tribute build ever.

Fitting, because this is the first time a Canadian stop has appeared on the Hot Wheels Legends tour, so Huth’s Celica is the first chance for a world’s first hoser-themed Hot Wheels. The semi-finals are streaming tonight at 8 pm EST, and the competition is fierce.

I’ll be rooting for Huth and his Celica, as should you. Because not only is it a creative and well-thought-out build, worthy of representing Canadian spirit to the Hot Wheels world, but there’s also something even more special about this machine. When I spoke to Huth, he was sitting in the room of his home that’s recently been converted into a nursery, and joked that he could see a few Hot Wheels from where he was sitting.

Because there’s a kid on the way. Little flannel onesies in the future. And, should Huth win, a 1/64th scale model of Dad’s wild Toyota will be among the first possessions for a brand-new young man. The pair of them both home-grown in Ontario.