[REVIEW] Tomica Lotus Esprit

I hinted that my next review would have Tomica "street wheels" - here it is. When I was a kid, I had this casting with the racing style wheels - a garage sale find, I knew it was special even then, this was after Tomica Pocket Cars left the NA market. I played with it some, then decided it would look interesting in one of my lego battle street scenes - so it received some fire damage. The idiocy of youth. I still have it somewhere.

The recent Hot Wheels Esprit seems to be a hit, here's one from when the real car was new, and it is just as good as or better than the modern casting. This is the 1:60 scale Tomica Lotus Esprit, introduced in 1979. Excellent detail and proportion, lovely pseudo JPS color scheme works with the gold wheels, it is a fine model:

It has decent interior detail, too. A looker, indeed:

All the goodness one expects from the brand:

And one super cool feature. You might have noticed a little nub under the front of the car, in the right facing pic. Yes, it has working pop up headlights:

Underneath, reasonable detail, and one can see the headlight lever:

Really, a little gem of a model.