If you’re like me, you’re currently banned from your local grocery stores, drug stores, Walmarts, Targets, and a smattering of convenience stores because the management has had enough of your screaming and shrieking and flinging racks of small toy cars to the ground because there are no 1985 Proton Saga Hot Wheels to be found. The struggle is real, people. No matter how many cardboard display stands of Hot Wheels you send skittering down the pet food aisle — voice raw and ragged from the nonstop caterwauling, limbs shaking in barely-contained rage, pants absolutely soaked in piping hot wrath-urine — these acts will simply will not cause Proton Saga Hot Wheels to exist, I’m sorry. But I’m not here to let you just suffer! I bring good news! Mattel has announced that it will be releasing a Proton Saga Hot Wheels after all! Hot damn!
As you know, the Proton Saga, introduced in 1985, was Malaysia’s first mass-produced car to be built and sold by a Malaysian company. Based on the second-gen Mitsubishi Lancer Fiore, the Saga – the name was both an acronym for “Safety, Achievement, Greatness, and Ability” and also referenced the Malay word for the tough seed of the Saga tree that looks like a ladybug, at least to me – was a huge success, and was largely responsible for launching the modern Malaysian automotive industry.
These first generation of Sagas came with 1.3 or 1.5-liter Mitsubishi Orion four-bangers, and in 1990 they launched an advanced-for-the-era three-valves-per-cylinder option called the Megavalve.
And soon, finally, you can carry one in your pocket with the blessing of Hot Wheels.
The reason Mattel, the parent company of the Hot Wheels brand, is making a version of the Saga is because it’s the company’s 40th anniversary of making Hot Wheels at the Perai, Penang plant called Mattel Malaysia Sdn Bhd (MMSB). The plant makes nine million Hot Wheels every week, and is the world’s sole producer of Hot Wheels single packs. You almost definitely have some of this plant’s products in your house right now, probably within arms’ reach, if I know our audience.
Let’s check out a video of this massive car factory:
Mattel is increasing production by 20% this coming year, and if you ask me the least they can do is make some of those cars their Malaysian factory is cranking out be the Car of Malaysia, the Proton Saga.
It’s about time, Mattel. Jeez.
(Photos of event from Piston Automotive News & Reviews Facebook Page, and thanks to Carlos Ferreira for the tip! Here’s hoping they let you back in Target!]
Hot Wheels is a dang cool company. I could be wrong, but my guess is the CEOS are still super passionate about even the most boring of cars. Some of the models they decide to make,, nothing but respect. I’ll take an AMC over a hyper car any day.
I had one of these in Australia back in 1988 where they were badged as the Mitsubishi Magna. Decent styling but very unreliable auto gearboxes. Design problems with the hydraulic valves inside the box. All gears would revert to Neutral and very heavy steering. My company had hundreds of them and mine was towed at least twice for this issue.
“Wrath urine.” Made me chuckle. Hopefully no explanatory article about it will follow, but I do understand the rage.
Oh wow. I have 8 Hot Wheels within arm’s reach, and except for one that doesn’t say where it was built, every single one of them came from that plant. Gonna go ahead and guess the others that I can’t reach have the same provenance, since all my HW are modern ones.
My preferences usually leaned more Matchbox as a kid because they made more ‘real’ models, and even now that tends to be the case vs. Hot Wheels.
A little less substantial feeling, but Maisto had some neat oddball real cars but were rarely if ever individual packs IIRC. Not sure if they’re still around.
As a bonus, Hot Wheels/Matchbox are the few cars that seem to be mostly defying inflation these days, still about a dollar or little more per car like they were ~20 years ago.
I went one step further, and preferred Majorettes to Matchbox – lots of opening parts, working suspension, and even more mundane stuff. Unfortunately, modern Matchbox seems to be getting a little too cost-cut, lots of the new models have black plastic windows so they don’t need an interior (mist disappointingly on the LEVC taxi).
Maisto’s still around too (even individually), although they seem to be mostly dollar store product now (both in distribution and quality).
Forgot about Majorette! I had a few when I was very very young, but never found them in any major stores as I got older, might be that we had moved to a different metro too that wasn’t likely to carry them. Always wished I could find more of them.
I think dollar stores were the only spot I’ve seen individual Maistos, and less so now. I appreciated that they put decals for the badges on but especially in the 2000s they seemed to dip, with rigid suspensions and no interiors. But still had emphasis on the larger scale models like 1:24 and 1:43 or whatever equivalent scales and I had picked up some of those then – somewhere I think I’ve got models of gen 1 Honda Pilot and Acura MDX in the latter scale, for example.
That’s too bad about the Matchbox quality. They seemed to be almost nonexistent for a while but found a good selection in other budget stores, and I’ve picked some up but kept them in the packaging for now. I have a GTI and an SVX one perched on top of a framed Blipshift poster of each. Though not perfectly complementary – the Matchbox GTI is a Mk 6 vs. the Mk 7 in the poster, and the SVX is burgundy vs. the white in the poster.
Somewhere, a little Malaysian boy is dreaming of finding one under the Ashura tree.
I have a Hotwheels (or Matchbox, etc) model of every car I’ve owned. Except for my S12 Silvia. So one of those next please Hotwheels?
And maybe a Citroen AX GT? I’ve got a toy base model, but the GT had a body kit, spoiler and round rear arches instead of part faired in rear wheels.
I’ve been trying to do this, but I have had some boring cars. I came close to my Citation, but I can’t find my shitty generation of Cavalier. And no Kia Niro.
I was really proud of myself when I found one of my Dad’s K20 Stepside that was even the right color and was a custom deluxe. It was a nearly perfect replica.
If you need to buy presents for small children, a mini version of mum or dad’s car often goes down well. I never expected to find a Matchbox Renault Megan Scenic until I looked.
Hey there fellow S12 fan! In case you’re not aware, Hot Wheels did produce an S12 in the Flip Outs line in 1986. They’re readily available on eBay and elsewhere. I have three, one still in Euro-market multilingual blister packaging.
Here’s one example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/265662589681
It’s a start, now about spinning a Colt wagon off from it.
If it’s Mattel, it’s swell!
“If you’re like me, you’re currently banned from your local grocery stores, drug stores, Walmarts, Targets, and a smattering of convenience stores because the management has had enough of your screaming and shrieking and flinging racks of small toy cars to the ground because there are no 1985 Proton Saga Hot Wheels to be found.”
You’re making a joke, but Hot Wheel collectors do get banned from stores for poor behavior. This can happen with toy collectors in general, by the worst offenders by far are those that deal in Hot Wheels
I haven’t worked big box retail in over 20 years, but even during my days at Target from ’94-’01 the Hot Wheels collectors were the absolute worst.
Customer comes in right as store opens:
“Do you have any boxes in back I can look through?” No
“What days do your orders come in?” Most of them
“Can you set the boxes aside so I can look through them before you stock them?” No, and as a punishment I’m now going to stock them at random times throughout the day so other people get a chance to get them.
HW has done a great job in recent years releasing shitbox castings and I’m a big fan. This Proton is going to be a must-have in my collection, just like this year’s Toyota Van has been.
“… limbs shaking in barely-contained rage …
“Contained” you say?
The fact that there is now a Proton Saga Hot Wheels but not a Yugo Hot Wheels saddens me a little.
“wrath-urine”
Some may disagree with me, but I contend that their 1993 debut album (known as “Vrede-Urin” in their domestic market) is the high point of the Norwegian scat-metal genre.
I’m glad that I wasn’t the only one that immediately though “album name” when I read “piping hot wrath urine”
Sadly, the last worthy Hot Wheels cars ended production in 1971 with the demise of Spectraflame paint..
Everything after that was shite.
I will die on this hill.
Fight me, you unenlightened fools.
The continued popularity of Hot Wheels kinda mystifies me, if I’m honest. I’m not judging, I just don’t understand. Kids have tons more toy options today than they used to, and for adults… I’m just not sure? But Mattel is upping production by 20% next year! So, there’s clearly something there. Clearly, a lot of people are into this! Just… why?
Mattel managed to really draw in the Millennial and late Gen X crowd by first starting to release some classic Japanese car models about 10 years ago right when the JDM scene started getting really big then kept that momentum going once cars from the 80s and 90s started skyrocketing in popularity. Now every year, there’s tons of cars from that general age range in their new releases and those ones often tend to be the most desired models in each case
I should know, it certainly worked on me and I have quite a few friends who are about the same age as me that are into collecting Hot Wheels as well. The fact that they’re still only about a dollar a piece for the basic ones helps too. You can build up a pretty sizable collection with some pretty cool models for not all that much money.
You can thank the late Ryu Asada for starting that trend.
S13 Sedan said it well (the $1 price point would be my guess for the big reason).
I’m Gen-X prime, and for me, they’re both a fun connection to childhood (I still have a couple from then) plus I enjoy the everyman nature of them. They’re not fussy delicate models you put on your desk but don’t touch, they’re born to ride orange roads.
I’ll admit I lean more toward Matchbox these days (most recent acquisition: Opel Kadett GT/E!) but I still love HW.
Tomicas are infinitely nicer. Toy proportions do not work for me in the least.
For kids, they’re great because they’re only a dollar each, require no batteries or instructions, are robustly built and colorful, and can be played with anywhere and any way you please.
In addition to nostalgia and value, there are a couple other factors I think are important:
Aggressive marketing is one, especially anything that ties into our collecting instinct. The video games do this well: part of the goal is collecting the cool cars, which you can also collect in real life.
Customizing is the other. With 3D printing and painting tutorials, cheap toy cars are a fun thing to customize. They aren’t the ones you can really do up in photos that make them look real, but they ARE good practice. There are also tabletop games like Gaslands that are played with customized Hot Wheels.
It is about time – this is actually really cool. When I was a very young kid, there was a brief period of time when I thought “Malaysia” was an automotive brand name, like Ford or Chevy.
I’d like to see the percentage of the Malaysian GDP generated by the factory in that video. Holy cow.
I’ll pick one up if I ever see one! I like to look through Hot Wheels ‘for my son’ at the store.. somehow all the nicer detailed ones with lights and badges end up in my garage.
Yeah, I’m always looking “for the nephews.” Somehow the collection in my office grows faster than theirs.
So it’s not just me who’s squatting down in front of the racks to read the names while mumbling things like “jeeze is it that hard to have the GT40 Mk IV in Foyt/Gurney red? I don’t want yellow!!”
After doing this since my 20’s, I’ve finally had to produce a kid to justify – due Aug 2023, will be a 2024 model year 🙂
I used to think this way too. Now I have Hot Wheels and Cartoon Network for myself and I’m damn proud of it. All I need now for true happiness is to become an Empty Nester.
Get ready for the it’s for my kid/gotta hide it from my kid routine. Oh and congratulations!
Congrats!
I thought I saw a Proton Saga toy in the store, but alas it was just a Mirage.
I get it!
COTD
I love it that Hot Wheels is making cool obscure stuff like this.
Hot Wheels can really surprise ya I’ve found.
Two of my favorite Hot Wheels are the 1962 Mustang concept (the 2 seat, mid-engine V4 open top sports car) and even more deep cut, the 1963 Mustang II concept (produced to get people to stop demanding production of the first one by getting them used to what was coming in a year).
I even have ’em in the original thin blue center stripe on white paint schemes. Go Mattel!
Got them both, plus a “Jackrabbit Special”, which was a thinly veiled send-up of the Mustang I.
Finally! I guess I can stop writing letters to Anwar Ibrahim, the Malaysian Prime Minister.
Wasn’t this one of his election promises?
Now you start writing two letters a week – Andy Dufresne
If I’m remembering the story correctly, Malcolm Bricklin was going to import the Saga to the US after the Yugo was inevitably a massive sales success.
Because “just import a car from an emerging market so that you can advertise that you’re selling the cheapest car in its class” is definitely an infinitely-repeatable plan.
This is true. As I read it, he wanted a four-door because that was a sticking point for many in the price bracket. But Zastava didn’t make one. So he went looking for other cheap car manufacturers and found Proton. The agreed to the deal with Bricklin and everything was going swimmingly until Mitsubishi got wind of it. The Saga was essentially a Mitsubishi built under license for Malaysia, but that license did not include export to the U.S. Which was a huge sticking point because Mitsubishi was about to enter the U.S. market themselves and didn’t want to be competing with an even cheaper version of their own product.
The amazing thing is that Proton America actually did achieve certification for the Saga, and as I recall there were about a half-dozen U.S.-spec examples assembled. I have always wondered if they still exist somewhere, talk about a piece of Malaise-era automotive history!
I’m a Yugo owner and a few years ago I happened to find a Proton America media launch kit on eBay. They had dealers signed on already and were ready. It’s really fascinating stuff.
As an addendum to this story, Mitsubishi forced out Proton’s entire board over the Bricklin thing. I wonder how the Safa wound up being sold in the U.K.?
At the time there was a “gentleman’s agreement” limiting Japanese imports to 11% of the UK new car market. Nissan, Toyota and Honda got around it by building in the UK, but Mitsubishi didn’t. They tried importing the Sigma from Australia as the Lonsdale, without much success. Proton being from Malaysia weren’t subject to the same limits. Mitsubishi were probably happy just to receive additional royalty payments for no extra effort, given increasing their own UK volume wasn’t really an option.
I love it how I end up learning something almost every time I come to this website. I’d wondered this myself, thanks for sharing the knowledge.
This is a happy place. I love the articles and the community.
I think Mitsubishi just made them wait until they had fully replaced this generation Colt/Mirage/Lancer.
Wow, imagine a dealer full of Zastavas and Protons…kind of like a standalone, entrepreneurial extra-budget Geo. Maybe they’d expand the lineup and tap Ssangyong for a small SUV entry too…
On top of Mitsubishi building the actual Mirage for Chrysler, surely the fact that Hyundai was entering the U.S. market based on Mitsubishi mechanicals (and Mitsu would also sell as the Precis) wouldn’t have helped – Mitsu would dominate the cheap car market but not in the way they would maybe hope.
There was some sort of a scam involving a US launch of the SsangYong Korando in the 1990s, didn’t involve Bricklin, I remember seeing some news magazine feature about a con artist who ran around signing up dealer franchises and ran off with the money because there wasnt any actual deal with SsangYong. Been trying for awhile to dig up information on that, but can’t seem to find it, might have been a smaller component of a bigger story or something
Mitsubishi was already in the US as of 1981 with the Cordia sedan and Tredia hatchback, followed by the pickup later that year, the Starion coupe in 1983 and the Shogun SUV in 1984. Everything else you stated was correct.
You also left out the fact that Bricklin had a really bad temper. That played a really big part in cutting ties with Subaru and Proton, and also in killing the potential deal with Chery in 2006. Once the Chinese witnessed his outbursts, they called it quits in a heartbeat.
That video was hypnotic for some stupid reason…
I gotta admit, I loled when the puppet showed up to help.
I’d add my favorite…”naked and covered with Peanut Butter’
The saga continues…