"I need customizable car toys!" Topic

my latest game idea is a lighthearted auto combat-racing game (the elevator pitch is 'Mad Max meets NASCAR') and I want it to have miniatures. What's more, I want the minis to be a combination of WYSIWYG and iconic: If a model has a huge engine sticking out of the hood, it obviously has a superchager. If the tires are twice as wide as usual, it has racing slicks, etc. For prototyping, i'd love to have some toy cars that represent this. Can anyone suggest toy ranges by name so I can start snarfing them up?

Stan Johanson Miniatures I think does cars. They are designed to fit onto Hot Wheels and their own line.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek.

Hot Wheels or Matchbox.
They're the only real options, and are what most people use for the game you're suggesting.

sad but true, and the sets of those that have what i'm looking for are woefully inadequate…i may have to do it the hard way.

Without much effort they can come out looking quite nice.
Here are a few of the ones we use:
link

for 15-20 mm gaming go hotwheels
for 25-32mm gaming go for 1:43 diecasts (ebay is your friend)

I get some diecast cars from FASTLANE (a Toys R us house brand) as well as Welly, Roadmaster, and a number of other diecast manufacturers (here in the southern US CVS has a display of 28mm scaled diecasts that they sell for about $5 USD per car… though they are all "box scale" meaning often drasticly out of scale with one another.

Take a figure when you go shopping (I keep a genericy metal on my keychain for this purpose)