Hot Wheels Convoy's, part 2: The Other Convoys of Hot Wheels

Steering Rigs are just a start of the large truck offerings at Hot Wheels.  In fact, there are plenty of these trucks around in the line and they too are large and some of them all in metal.  So far these trucks have only appeared in the mainline a few times and since then resorted to premium lines.  The VW Drag Bus is one heavy truck, but it has nothing against the pure beauty of these trucks.  They include Rolling Thunder, Long Gone, Kenworth T600A, Convoy Custom, and Custom 1938 Ford C.O.E.

The Beginning: Rolling Thunder and Long Gone

Around the time the Steering Rigs were introduced Hot Wheels also released a few tractor cabs in the basic mainline called Rolling Thunder and Long Gone.  The primary differences here is that these trucks are larger and lack any holes in the rear for carrying trailers including the Steering Rig trailers.  Still, both are made of metal, are heavy, and lasted only a few years before a resurgence in the 2000's (actually 1996 for Rolling Thunder).  The Rolling Thunder is based on the Kenworth COE and is the reason why I passed on the similar Steering Rigs Kenworth casting.  It is an imposing truck with a big and boxy look that looks great from any angle.  The front has a tall grille, quad headlights, and detailed rivet indents.  The sleeper cab is the largest in the group and has two sky windows on top in a V-shape.  The sides have steps just behind the front wheels to get into the cab and dual exhaust blended into the cab.  The interior has detailed seats with a nice dashboard layout and a visible bed in the sleeper area.  In 1983 it was released in yellow, and after that it disappeared until 1996 when this nice, clean burgundy model appeared.  In this version it has a chrome plastic base instead of metal, 5-spoke wheels up front yet still uses the basic wheels at the rear.  It is one of my favorite truck casting deco's and pretty much got me hooked onto the tractor cab Hot Wheels rigs.

On the other side was a hot-rodded truck called Long Gone.  While not based on any actual truck it does have the look of a custom Peterbilt.  The most notable feature is the lowered front-end that gives it that street rod look, large center plastic grille, and metal lower bumper with rectangular headlights.  The side air filter housings and exhaust stacks are part of the base, and as another hot rod touch the side exhaust flow down from the engine under the steps before back up into the rear stacks.  Fuel tanks are under the sleeper cab that has an aerodynamic wing for the trailer, while the rear has detailed taillights and mud flaps.  This truck, like the Rolling Thunder, debut in 1983 and had only a few years lifespan.  In 2012 the casting was returned in the Hot Ones line in maroon with Long Gone graphics.  Surprisingly it is still a popular truck continuing into the Boulevard series in 2013 and then in 2015 for the Redliners series where I managed to finally find one after many hunts and close calls for the gold truck with redline tires.

Kenworth T600A and Convoy Custom

The downfall of Hot Wheels designs was the early 1990s: if you look at them they lack accurate and crisp details and with the advent of plastic bases made these castings look bland compared to earlier and today's castings.  Don't know what went wrong then, but a good example is the Kenworth T600A.  The T600 was the truck that Kenworth needed in the 1980's to combat rising fuel prices with a sleeker and more aerodynamic truck.  The front hood, headlights, windshield, and sleeper cab were designed for better aerodynamics and it worked making this model one of the popular tractor cabs of the 1980's and 1990's. The dashboard has digital gauges designed from Boeing and featured better ride comfort and controls.  Even with the T600's great achievements in fuel-efficiency it was still based on the W900 chassis, and that W900 model still continues today because of demand to keep the old faithful running.  As a Hot Wheels model it is big, has a metal body, and the right design.  On some models it has a trailer to attach to, but it is rather cheap for a model with a plastic base and no interior.  The front has the chrome grille with chrome headlights, but the rear cab is too large and starts to impede on the space over the rear axles.  The version shown here in silver is another sign of irony:  this was the 1996 Race Team version and replaced the original plan of the Ford LTL steering rig casting to be the racing truck.  I remember it well because me and my mom looked all over the place for the LTL only to find out that it was replaced with the Kenworth (it even says Ford LTL on the blisters of the Kenworth truck!!!)

Big trucks took a quiet road for several years with the Steering Rig castings long gone, the Rolling Thunder making one brief appearance, and in 1999 the T600A finally get retired in the Final Run series.  More trucks came out, but these were plastic generic castings that had nothing on the original Steering Rigs.  Then in 2009 Larry Wood came out with another custom tractor cab, just like what he did with Long Gone, but with more class called Convoy Custom.  The Custom starts off with a more classic look (think 1960's Peterbilt or Mack) and lowers the truck, stretches the wheelbase by eliminating the tandem axle in the rear, loweres the cab roof, stretches the hood, and removes the side hood covers.  The result is one striking hot rod truck.  The front has a rounded grille that curves with the shape of the hood, joined by round headlights and a lower bumper with hooks at the front.  The roof is low and barely visible is the interior details, if any.  The front fenders are nice and round and flow with the diamond plate steps for access into the cab.  With the rear tandem axle out the fuel tank can grow larger just under the sleeper cab.  The exhaust stacks in chrome nicely align with the curve of the exhaust on the base, while the sleeper gets a sleek spoiler in chrome.  At the rear the hitch is in chrome and detailed even though it probably won't haul anything, while the rear bumper has sharp detailing of the taillights and mud flaps in metal.

Yes it does have a metal base and even with that it still fees ligher than past Steering Rig models.  The cherry on the cake is the detailed I-6 diesel motor on the side openings with visible turbo's on the headers.  It was not easy to find this truck when it premiered in the Classics line in 2009 and then the Delivery series in 2010, but thanks to a Kmart mail-in from 2011, and luck scoring a Peanuts Snoopy version and a Nestle Crunch on a blister that was ready to come apart I now have three nice examples.  All are nice, but my favorite is the Crunch version in the blue and white colors with multi-spoke spinner wheels on redline rubber tires.  Very stylish!

Custom 1938 Ford C.O.E.

To wrap things up is another COE truck that I found as a Kmart mail-in exclusive, the custom 1938 Ford COE.  This truck is very famous thanks to Larry Wood and his history with Ford products: he created the COE in the late 1990's Adult Collector line sets from El Woody to Gone in 60 Seconds, and most of them as a flatbed truck.  Here the casting gets revised into a COE truck with a fifth-wheel hitch for towing.  The front has the famed round grille of Ford trucks with round headlights to the sides, signal lights below, and a lower bumper with a gridded pattern to it.  COE's at the time were mostly trucks that were closer to the front, yet the cab was still behind the front-axle so you still had a bit of hood nose at the front.  The roof has a nice round contour to the cab shape with detailed lights and horns, round front fenders, and exhaust stacks nestled into the sleeper cab.  The truck has a noticeable rake at the rear with 5-spoke mag wheels on rubber tires looking good here.  At the rear is a pickup-bed style with the chrome hitch nestled deep in the bed along a diamond plate pattern and dual taillights on the rear bumper.  The base is metal and has nice details of the frame, driveshaft, and exhaust system.  The interior is basic layout with bucket seats and a simple dashboard layout.  As for the sleeper in the back it is hard to tell of there's any detailed bed in the back.  So far this casting has limited use in the Hot Wheels premium lines, mostly the HotWheelsCollectors.com site and show promo's , but hopefully Mattel can use this truck more and more in other premium lines in the near future.

Nothing says cool like a big, heavy, all-metal truck and these Hot Wheels Convoy rigs from the Steering Rigs to the Convoy Custom illustrate that point against the plastic generic cars that plague the current Mainline series.