Greetings everyone, it’s nice to be back… Technically I’m here all the time, checking in and reading posts daily but not much activity when it comes to posting. What better way to break that spell with a couple of what I consider “first” category. Believe it or not, despite me being on LaLD for over 2 years this is my first ever “Spaghetti Sunday” post mainly because I tend to share my favorite Italian cars before Sunday comes around. This one is indeed Italian but it’s something you guys didn’t expect me to review and get excited for.
This cute little fella is the new Fiat 500D Modificado from the latest HW Car Culture series featuring theme is air-cooled engines. I was happily surprised to come across this set so soon at Target, LamleyGroup did give a heads up that first sightings of this set is showing up at Target everywhere after several weeks of clearance on everything. The car portray a racier, sportier version of Fiat’s small compact with removed front bumper, flared fenders to accommodate wider tracks for better handling, NACA ducts on the rear side windows to guide air into the engine and open rear hood which was an accidental discovery. When Abarth the racing company that tune Fiats found a quick solution to solve engine overheating issues realized the opened rear hood doubles as a spoiler and helped improve top speed and was then decided to sell Abarth tuned Fiats with opened hood.
The proportion of this cast is good as well as the overall quality of the paint and tampos, the only fault I can find is the lack of headlight/taillight for a premium cast which is in all honesty a very small concern considering it’s an easy fix that you’ll see in the following few pics. The other notable thing on this little Fiat are those 4 spoke wheels that were first seen on the Japanese Historics set except this is the first time we seen them in such a small size. I like many absolutely dig these new wheels and excited that this is the first cast in my collection to feature these wheels since I lucked out on the Mazda RX-3 :(
The set as a whole in my opinion is so-so, it does introduce a whole new casting but I feel just like the Redliners set that came before it, Mattel could’ve picked better existing casts to complete it. There’s no denying that you can’t have an air cooled engine theme set without classic VWs but the hot rod style Custom Beetle is a cast we can do without. Personally, the only ones I would take home from this set would be the little Fiat and the Outlaw Porsche 356 which sadly someone already beat me to it. But overall, I feel this set will be a lot more successful and fly off the shelves way quicker than the Redliners or the Trucks set did.
That wraps up this review, thanks for looking, don’t forget this set is showing up everywhere so if you’re interested check your local Targets. As always if anyone like me to shoot more pics of this little speeder can always be requested in the comments.
Ciao