#nightburnerz

[thriftx3-collectibles]

Hot Wheels Nightburnerz 1/10 Custom Datsun 240Z #65/365 Dark Blue 2018

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Hot Wheels Nightburnerz 1/10 Custom Datsun 240Z #65/365 Dark Blue 2018 | eBay

The Hot Wheels Nightburnerz 1/10 Custom Datsun 240Z #65/365 for sale in dark blue is a diecast toy car featuring a 1:10 scale model of the D

[thriftx3-collectibles]

Hot Wheels Nightburnerz ’15 Mazda MX-5 Miata #40 White — a 1:64 scale diecast collectible! Perfect for Nightburnerz series fans, Miata lovers, and Hot Wheels collectors. Limited edition, add it to your collection today!

Hot Wheels Nightburnerz 15 Mazda MX-5 Miata #40 White 1:64 Scale | eBay

This15 Mazda MX-5 Miata #40 White Hot Wheels Nightburnerz is a highly collectibledie-cast car for fans, collectors, and Hot Wheels enthusias

[secretcatpolicy]

Nightburnerz, Part 2: What are Nightburnerz, exactly?

I don't usually pay attention to the 'mini collection'/segment/series/group things within the main line releases all that much, since I can't afford the money or shelf space needed to be a completist, and making a habit of buying things I don't really want just because they're in the same series (I'm sticking with this word from now on) is not only against my wider principles but is also a certain way to run out of both money and space. Usually these series are pretty self explanatory, but some are a bit esoteric, and none more so in my estimation than Nightburnerz. So I found myself wondering, what does inclusion in this series actually mean? What is the measure of a Nightburner?

Happily, I have here several of them from across the series lineage, and close analogues to others, so let's investigate this a bit and see what these have in common. The Wikia site characterises the series as featuring "brightly colored tuners" and notes "sometimes a sports car makes the cut", which seems an odd statement as most 'tuners' (I hate this word, to me it implies that tuning is necessary to make said cars competitive, when it's frequently applied to cars that are hot as hell from the factory) are already sports cars, but by any metric that seems a very loosely defined group, containing as it does about half of what HW make, if not more. Also, there are plenty of muscle cars and pony cars throughout the series, even a motorbike in 2015.

The series started, apparently, in 2010, and appeared after that in the main line in some form in 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, then as five-packs in 2021, 2022, 2024 and, obviously, 2025. In 2016 the series added the capsule description "Super speeders designed for night driving", which sounds authoritative. But you know, what car is not designed for night driving?

That descriptor suggests to me two possibilities:

a series with big rally-style clusters of driving lights, which I'd be super down for - but very few releases in the 15-year history of the series have any extra lights at all; or

a series with paintwork intended for night-time, either bright for easy visibility (potentially to the point of something like the Neon Speeders silver/pseudopremium series) or dark for stealth. There are examples of both these styles among the series' history.

If we take the night paintwork idea, we can divide the Nightburnerz cars I have into two even groups: bright and dark. Here's the bright group: back row L to R: '09 BMW Z4M GT3 (2020), '15 Porsche 911 GT3 RS 991.2 (2017), '71 Nissan Skyline 'Hakosuka' GT-X (2017), '65 Nissan Fairlady 2000 (2019), front row L to R: '18 Bentley Continental GT3 (2020), '70 Chevrolet Chevelle SS racer (2017), '69 Porsche 914 Safari (2020), '88 Honda CR-X (2019)

And the dark group: '71 Nissan/Datsun Fairlady 240 ZG (2017), '96 Nissan 180 SX Type X (2018), '90 Chevrolt Impala SS (2020), '09 Nissan GT-R CBA-R35 (2010), '71 Nissan Fairlady/Datsun 240 ZG (2016; note this is a nearly identical car to the 2018 Nightburnerz release, but we'll get more into this car later), '07 Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione (2014), '73 Nissan Skyline 'Kenmeri' GT-R (2014), '17 Jaguar XE SV Project 8 (2020)

Additionally, I have several cars that were in Nightburnerz in other guises but these are not so different: '11 Subaru Impreza WRX STI (2022; Nb2013 car had a rally livery in traditional Subaru blue), '85 Honda City Turbo II (2022; Nb2019 had a blue version with a different livery), '88 Mazda RX-7 FC (2023; Nb2022 five-pack had a gloss yellow version), '15 Ford Focus RS (202; Nb2016 had a plain blue version), '20 McLaren Speedtail (2020; Nb2022 five-pack had a purple version), '89 Nissan 300ZX Z32 (20; Nb2024 five-pack had an orange version), '11 Lamborghini Aventador (2017; Nb2011 had a black Reventón, the origin of the Aventador's design language), '12 Lamborghini Sesto Elemento (2017; Nb 2015 had an acid green version).

So what can be said about all these? What do all these cars have in common? Clearly these are all performance road cars, and have relatively little in common otherwise. Many are Japanese, but not all, almost exactly half; many are visibly modified, which tallies with the 'tuner cars' description, but again, not all, and some are factory tuned racing versions of road cars which demands the definition be a bit more loose. It's interesting when looking at lists of the older castings to note how many fantasy castings were in the series at first, but the number tailed off over time. The 2025 Dimachinni Veloce is a bit of a departure as previous fantasy castings in this series are largely not gestalt fantasy cars that pull ideas from multiple different cars but rather fantasy cars that resemble specific real cars like the Super Tsunami (Supra A80), Asphalt Assault (Integra) and 24/7 (RX-7FD).

To me, they resemble nothing as a group quite so much as the car roster in a Need For Speed game (and I've replicated three of them in game before…). In fact, the blue 2016 240ZG was one of a few cars made as a tie-in with Need For Speed 2015, and an identical car was available in-game. It's based closely on the Nissan Fairlady Z owned by Jun Imai, a former Hot Wheels designer and founder of scale model/nebulous cool stuff brand Kaido House, who work as essentially a sub-brand of Mini GT. Note the Kaido House decals. This same car was then used as a base for the less faithful (and less licenced) copy that appeared in the Nightburnerz series in 2018, sans Kaido House decals but with a 'Neo Kaido' decal instead. It's a different casting too - note wing mirrors and different wide wheel arch contours. That one is named as a Datsun 240Z, the international version, whereas the Kaido House version is named as the JDM Nissan Fairlady Z. In both cases these are ZG cars, fitted with the aerodynamic long 'G' nose.

[linguistics/sociology intermission]

Kaidō (街道 , the ō, and any other vowel with a macron, is a long vowel sound)is a Japanese word for road, especially a highway in its original meaning of 'main travel route between places' and can be found describing ancient roads in Japan dating back hundreds of years (I used to cycle home along part of the Hokkoku Kaidō route from Takasaki to Nagano, nowadays served by National Route 18), but it may be familiar to Japanese car enthusiasts in the phrase 'kaidō racer' (街道レーサー), referring to a broad style of street racing-inspired customising from the '70s and '80s; shakotan (シャコタン or 車高短, lowered cars) and grachan (グラチャン, from the Fuji Speedway GRAnd CHAMpionship, a silhouette racer series that inspired a style) are sub-categories. When new, these were kind of troublemaker's cars, hence another word that often gets used in connection with these styles: 'yankii' (ヤンキー). This is peripherally related to the English demonym 'Yankee' meaning American, and comes from 1) the bad behaviour of US troops stationed in Japan after the war and 2) the popularity of US culture and the associated emphasis on freedom as a core cultural value (i.e. freedom from cultural norms, as opposed to the traditional core cultural value in Japanese culture, harmony) among Japanese delinquents in the '70s.

Sometimes you hear the word 'bōsōzoku' (暴走族) applied to this broad style of car, especially the more extreme ones, but this is kind of a translation error: that's a word for a person, literally translated as 'violent running tribe', an aggressive and delinquent gang member (or the gang as a whole), who might drive such a car (but most often rides a motorbike), not the car itself. That said, Japanese sometimes use this word, but it's not very flattering so maybe avoid it when talking to Japanese people.

My awesome former colleague and Jeep fan Saria taught me a really good word for such cars: 'yan-sha' (ヤン車) - literally 'yankii car'. This Hakosuka GT-X, with awesome Goodyear wheels swapped on, not in this case by me, is a great example of a classic Kaido racer yan-sha, a car built just to make trouble. The real car that this is based on was built and liveried based on cars of the period.

[Linguistics/sociology intermission ends]

I think all this gives us a really good clue to how these cars are "designed for night driving":

they are likely to be driven at night - in street races.

A lot of car culture comes from street racing, especially the Japanese scene, but naturally Mattel can't be seen to endorse illegal and dangerous street racing openly in cars designed, at face value, for children. So instead, they invented a euphemism for it: Nightburnerz. They frequently coin euphemisms for street racing, often quite evocative ones, in their premium series (Ronin Run, Mountain Drifters, Canyon Warriors, Autostrasse and so on) but this is the original HW 'plausible deniability not-street racers' series.

Maybe this is all obvious to everyone else, but to me it's an interesting discovery, and intriguing to see where Mattel decided to really start focusing on real-life car culture in Hot Wheels, a bit prior to and then parallel to the Car Culture premiums that started in 2016.

[diecastplasticmodels]

McLAREN SENNA (HOT WHEELS)

McLAREN SENNA (HOT WHEELS)

HOME – POCKET CARS – HOT WHEELS – NIGHTBURNERZ – McLAREN SENNA Reálne auto McLAREN SENNA vždy bude v našich očiach vzbudzovať pozornosť. Podobnú reakciu sme očakávali aj od malého modelu z dielne HOT WHEELS. Udialo sa tak len čiastočne. Vďaka priehľadnej streche vozidla dobre vidieť interiér. Vďaka tomu sa dizajnéri snažili navrhnúť detaily dobre. Línie vozidla sú tiež dobre navrhnuté. Horšie je…

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[awfdiecast]

⭐Dodge Challenger DriftCar 📆2019 🌃NightBurnerz 🎫FYG83 🔴 ________________________________ #hotwheels #hotwheelsofficial #hotwheelspics #nightburnerz #hotwheelscollection #hotwheelscollectors #hotwheelslovers #hotwheelsbr #hotwheelsbrasil #diecastbrasil #hotwheelsinstagram #hwbrasil #dodge #challenger (em São Paulo, Brazil) https://www.instagram.com/p/B5eCJZWJaXm/?igshid=rgnsubbv8rgm

[jet-iii]

This new Hotwheels ID game is legit. I'm in love with my car! #hotwheelsid #nightburnerz https://www.instagram.com/p/B4qKGK-Hpyc/?igshid=1no8xcjfyxfyp

[overliter012]

#Hotwheels #Hotwheels5pack #NightBurnerz https://www.instagram.com/p/B4L5wQbJPzn/?igshid=pxzyq6e0n68k

[overliter012]

#Hotwheels #Hotwheels5pack #NightBurnerz - #1970 #chevy #chevelle #1970chevelle https://www.instagram.com/p/B4L5ij2pwTc/?igshid=2hunvts3b9es