If you’re reading this right now, chances are you’re like me and you have an affliction for collecting tiny cars. Look, I get it, I can’t afford a real Lotus Emira, but I can definitely buy a Hot Wheels version. Most of the time, displaying your rides means putting them in a boring clear case. Forget that, I have something better. Start putting your cars in these sweet scale model convenience stores!
Selling off my most problematic cars has allowed me to give some more attention to previously neglected hobbies. Since offloading my worst cars, I’ve revived a motorcycle that’s been sitting for 11 years, built a few computers, fixed my BMW E61, revived a mothballed Smart, and even got most of the way to getting my 1948 Plymouth Special Deluxe going. That just goes to show how much time having too many cars takes out of your life.
I also got back into collecting Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars. I’ve been out of this game for so long I wasn’t even aware of the scalping phenomenon until Hot Wheels teased the “Not Wheels” limited release last year. That hasn’t stopped me from buying the cars I want and I’ve perhaps expanded my collection by a few dozen cars over the past month. Eventually, I hit a sort of wall. I have hundreds of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, but display only a couple at a time. I wanted a cool way to show these bad boys off!
Just displaying your diecast collection is pretty easy. Go to your local store, buy a display case, and put the cars in the display case. Boom, you’re done. Or, you could buy a 1/64 diecast-specific case, which also does the job. But here’s the thing: these options look terribly boring.
That’s when I discovered that there’s a whole world of 1:64 diecast car dioramas out there. Want to display your cars in something that looks like a rich guy’s garage? Boom, you can get one of those for $25 on Amazon:
Do you want to operate the world’s smallest buy-here-pay-here lot, complete with LED lighting? You can 3D print that!
Tiny car dioramas are all over the Internet and the vast majority of them are super affordable. Seriously, a search for “car diorama 1/64” online yields some incredible results. Here’s a completely random three-story 1/64 car garage that I found on eBay:
All of these were cool, but I wanted something more. I wanted to replicate real life. Back in 2023, I was lucky enough to test the Ford F-150 FP700 right on a weekend when Detroit’s Woodward Ave was alive with all sorts of car enthusiasm. I saw everything from souped-up rotted-out trucks to Lamborghinis and all points in between.
At some point in my drive up and down the iconic strip, I pulled into a Shell station a little bit away from my favorite Detroit area burger joint. In fact, it was the exact gas station above.
What was memorable about it was that it was teeming with car enthusiasm. There was a group of maybe five Ferdinand Piech-era Volkswagens lined up for one pump. On the other side was a highly-modified current-gen Toyota Supra banging off of its rev-limiter. In the nearby parking lot sat a variety of pickup truck bros and I even saw a random guy just chilling in his Lucid Air. Of course, it was still a regular gas station, of course, so among the chaos of enthusiasm there were still old ladies in Subarus just trying to get some gas and such.
I thought, “How do I replicate that, but in Hot Wheels form?” As it turns out, that part is super easy, barely an inconvenience. A number of creators and companies make branded versions of tiny car dioramas. You can get dioramas that replicate garages and dealerships of popular car brands. You can also get dioramas focused on car culture.
Back in the 2010s, car enthusiasts began having little meetups at places like 7-Eleven, posting sweet pictures of their rides just in front of the warm glow of the famous company logo. It became such a huge thing that 7-Eleven continues to openly embrace it. The convenience store company’s Instagram account is full of cool cars and cool people fueling up.
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At first, I was blown away that you can buy a scale model of a 7-Eleven to replicate these scenes with your diecast cars. An enthusiast-run model company called Aventi Designs makes a pretty sweet catalog of garages, nature spaces, and street scenes. These folks even make a Starbucks that you can park your diecasts in front of.
I also found something called G-Fans. Despite some sleuthing, I couldn’t really find anything about this company. I know it’s a company that makes miniature models and ships from China, but that’s about it. At any rate, G-Fans does have a pretty awesome model of a Shell station with incredible detail.
The company also has what I think is one of the coolest models of a 7-Eleven store. So screw it, I parted ways with $100 and bought both. The Shell station was $60 at the time and the 7-Eleven was $40. I got the Shell station from LiveCarModel.com and the 7-Eleven model from an eBay seller.
The Shell station arrived a few days ago and I was excited to put it together. I was immediately impressed with this thing. It came neatly packed and protected with pretty clear instructions on how to put it all together.
Everything just snaps into place, but if the snap-fit isn’t secure, G-Fans says to simply glue it. In my case, most bits fit together snugly. The only parts that needed glue were the station’s garbage cans and one of the pumps.
Check out the level of detail here. The prints on the plastic aren’t super-high resolution, but you can make out Hot Wheels cars and jugs of coolant on the shelves. You can clearly read the ads for Red Bull and other stuff like that.
The intricate details are also really cool. Check out the work put into making the gas pump realistic:
The real magic comes in the lighting system. The diorama uses just one LED strip to light the whole thing up. The lighting effects are pretty neat, too. The gas station store doesn’t have a real roof, so it gets direct lighting from the LEDs. The gas station canopy is made out of plastic thin enough for the LED’s light to perfectly bleed through them.
Turn off the lights and the effect is just fantastic:
Next came placing the cars, and this was also really easy. A reader recommended a sort of adhesive called Quakehold Museum Wax to secure diecast cars. The stuff is marketed as being just tacky enough to hold things in place and keep them there in case of interactions with pets or earthquakes, and many museums do use it for their displays. The wax holds firmly yet releases easily with a twist. In other words, it’s great stuff for a static display! I gave each car a small ball of wax and yep, they’re staying put just fine. And true to the product’s word, when I peeled a car off of the diorama this morning I found no damage to the diorama or the car. Brilliant.
Once you set your diorama up, you can buy little figurines to pose against the cars and put into the store to help the diorama come to life. I haven’t done that yet, but I did put it into a display case to keep it safe from my dastardly birds. Next, I just have to wait for the 7-Eleven one to come in so I can do this all over again.
If I have any advice, is that you should avoid buying the cheapest possible display case on Amazon. The one I put the gas station into is only barely passable as a case and I had to super glue its connection points together. Otherwise, even a light breeze makes it come apart.
Anyway, was the a waste of 100 bucks? Eh, maybe. But hey, the way I see it, spending smaller amounts of money on collectibles is probably better than spending tons of money on broken cars that’ll never work well, right? Either way, I dig it, and it definitely upped my diecast car display. So, it’s all good in my book.
Cool stuff!
And well, Mercedes, I’m at least a couple (probably three) of decades older than you. Back when the really nice Hot Wheels were being produced, we were racing them down a variety of slides. Steel and concrete. The paint and wheels didn’t stand a chance.
We were racing 1/32 scale slot cars and spraying WD-40 on the track in the corners.
Before that, we were destroying potentially valuable baseball cards in our bikes’ spokes.
Despite being aware of that as an adult, I didn’t preserve my kid’s toys, Pokemon cards, etc.
Kudos to those who did, but they were just toys. Meant to bring meaningful, bonding moments and not to be a financial investment.
Hey Mercedes! If you really want to go bananas with street scene dioramas, you really need to check out ScaleSigns. Extensive is a good word for their inventory. The signs really look amazing because the attention to detail is top notch. They even offer lifelike small-scale M-1 highway signs made here that would complement your Shell station. Want a custom street sign mounted on a pole with, say, Woodward Ave and Catalpa Dr in Berkley, like you’d see on the street corner? They got you covered.
Miller Engineering produces some very high-quality lighted signs that may be of interest here too, along with mini flourescent, electroluminescent, and led kits that you can use to build your own scenes or light existing scale buildings. I bought a star projector a few years ago from these guys that is utterly incredible, and they do pride themselves on good quality.
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That’s pretty cool, but what about the die-casts that feature an opening hood? We need an AutoZone parking lot.
It looks just like rescaled model railroad scenery. I’ve considered that since I have a fleet of German HO models
3D print your own display.
https://makerworld.com/en/models/1185926-carvana-1-64-scale-showroom-hot-wheels-storage#profileId-1196922
Dammit Mercedes! I’m trying to cut down on my frivolous spending! If I had a place to put these I’d be in serious trouble.
Sent you a better idea
I actually like the clear wall-mounted ones too. I have a 1:64 spec one for mine, and I enjoy seeing the cars all gridded up.
And I carefully arrange them so the colors (and b/c autopia, the makes) are pleasingly balanced, or things are otherwise appropriate – like the Ford GT history row, or Shelby corners (which, yes, intersects with the GT40 at the beginning of said row).
I have a collection of about 150 “well played with” 50’s and 60’s Matchbox cars. I think they display better than anything new or still in the old box. They tell a story!
Display them?!? Race them!!!
http://www.youtube.com/@3Dbotmaker
I definitely have the Matchbox affliction. Hundreds of them, still in their blister packs. Still have every Marchbox/Hot Wheels from my youth too.
Mercedes, Hunter House is your fav? We hang out during the Dream Cruise at the intersection 1/2 block south of there. Best spot on Woodward. But, personally, I prefer Greene’s (10 Mile and Orchard Lake Rd). Hard to beat either of them, though….
I “display” mine one at a time. I have to change my Windows password every 90 days, and we’re not allowed to write it down so things can get tricky especially if I have to change it on a Friday.
Even then, for the first week or two (okay, month) the old password will automatically flow out of the fingers until I recall the new one.
When the warnings pop up that I need to change it soon, I’ll pick a new car that provides some sort of easy trigger as to what the new password will be, and place it right under my monitor the day of the change.
For example, several years ago the red Ferrari 308 was for “Magnum3.14”. (Get it???)
Haven’t had a problem forgetting my password ever since I started doing this.
Tomika’s are my addiction along with the Hotwheels and now i need to get that Japanese 7-11 for my Tomica’s to hang out at.
My current display for my model cars consists of old wooden bottle crates and plastic cases I bought on Amazon. When I’m a tad more financially secure, I will for sure invest in some of these cool dioramas. I have over 1,000 cars though so it may take a while…
Also it should be noted that LiveCarModel has models of SO many brands. Everything from Ford, Toyota, and Kia (yes they have a Carnival), to obscure stuff like Donkervoort, Matra, and Dongfengjinlong (whatever that is).
“Anyway, was this a waste of 100 bucks?
Eh, maybe.” No.This is genuinely cool. It has never occurred to me to make a diorama to display my model cars. Most of my model cars are arranged on various pieces of furniture at the moment, so this would be a huge improvement.
Over the years I’ve collected over 2,000 Hot Wheels cars…I’d have to get a whole lot of these to display all of them!
When I was a kid, I had around 200-300 Matchbox or Hotwheels cars. I combined them with my Lego to create massive layouts on the floor of the unfinished basement. Recently, 40-plus years later, I gutted and started a remodel of our basement. A big part was a purge of stuff that hadn’t shifted location since we moved in 12 years ago. The remnants of the Legos and diecast cars were part of what got the boot.
The Legos were easy to get rid of; a few pieces were worth a total of $200, but most went to a place that buys bulk by the gallon. The cars were harder. They were very well worn, having been played with for years. I looked at the values, and a quick survey showed that if they had been mint in the package, my collection could have been worth $20-$50k. Being mostly free of paint and missing wheels, they were worth basically zero.
I am at the age where purging all the junk feels infinitely better than holding on to it.
The reason I try not to collect too much physical stuff that isn’t “useful” (where it must have some utility beyond it gives me pleasure to look at it, and this is absolutely not a knock on those that do) is that I LOVE miniatures and models, and would be absolutely consumed by them. I love this so much. I get a little (miniature?) vicarious thrill from this.
my dad has an extensive collection, but they are all still in their boxes!
if it were me, I would much rather do something like this.
As someone who currently has a lineup of most of the cars I’ve owned in 1/64th scale on my dresser, I will be purchasing something similar to the ones above!
Advertising a Ferrari F1 car model right next to a Red Bull ad is an interesting choice.