Cars Toys Blog

I mentioned on Friday that I received my Motor Speedway of the South set in the mail before going away for the weekend. Now that I am back, I had a chance to unpack my set and put it together. I took lots of photos and notes, and I thought I would put together a mini review for everyone. Here are my impressions. Click on the thumbnails to view the larger images.

First, you can see the box is huge. This box came inside an outer shipping box and fit pretty snugly inside.

The display case is the most impressive part of the set. It is huge as well. It is made of very sturdy cardboard and plastic.

The Cars are shipped separately inside a smaller cardboard box.

On opening this box, you can see the Cars are wrapped individually in small plastic bags and stored inside 2 plastic trays. This insures the Cars arrive undamaged.

There are several cardboard inserts to make sure the case holds its shape and isn’t crushed in shipping.

The top of the case is removable. You can see that the bottom part of the base sits on a thick piece of clear plastic. This ensures its sturdiness. There are also holes for stands that the Cars fit onto.

This is a shot showing how the stands fit onto the base to hold the Cars. There are no instructions on how to put it together, but I think I managed to figure it out. I put them on long ways to make sure the Cars are held on the base properly.

From this shot, you can see how the pegs on the stands fit inside the wheel wells to hold up the Cars on the base.

The Dale Jr. in this set is different from the regular release Dale. The body style is different and Dale has a more determined look on his face where the original is smiling. As far as I know this is the only one of the 12 already released Cars that is different from the original version.

Here it is. I wasn’t sure how to arrange them on the base, so I put the Cars in the same order as the original press shots from the Hot Wheels Collectors site. Yeah, I’m unoriginal like that.

And here it is again with the top on!

One interesting thing is that Chick Hicks didn’t fit on the regular pegs like all the other Cars did. Luckily, Mattel included 2 longer pegs so that Chick can be displayed along with the rest of them. Another interesting thing is that the box is labeled ages 14 and up. This set is clearly geared toward collectors. So if you bought it for your child, you will need to put it together or at least take all the Cars out of the packaging and put the little plastic stands away before they can play with it.

All in all, the experience of putting this set all together was great. However, I found it very frustrating that there were no instructions included, though it was easy enough to figure out. Still, this is definitely the best Cars set ever made! The display case is the best part, and probably the main reason why the set is so expensive. The box is huge and very sturdy. And although it was expensive, I’m glad I now have it in my collection.