#20-08 Solar Reflex

Solar Reflex

Solar power. A seemingly unlimited source of energy (at least for most who read this) and with all the electric and green movements going on, why not have a hot rod / race car to fit into this genre? And who better to make it cool than Hot Wheels?

There is no real car to compare to, so I will attempt to analyze this one up close. It also has not been around very long. Solar Reflex was first cast in 2007 (the gold version in the pictures is the first edition) and has had a light showing since its arrival. Solar Reflex is a race car style car with a major portion of the top of the car covered in solar tiles. A minor re-tooling in 2018 added a square to the back half of the car in the solar tiles, my best guess after inspection with a magnifying glass is that it represents a charging port for an electric version of the car. I had assumed that this would be considered an all-electric car but the charging port addition finalized that for me at least.

It is a pretty cool casting and is really good on the orange track. The wheel choices so far have been some of the more exotic looking wheels but they all seem to fit the look properly. Traditional 5 spokes would be odd looking on such a modernized vehicle.

With all the crazy cars popping up at the big car shows like Geneva or the from the Tesla studios, it is not out of the realm of possibilities for this casting to someday surface as a real car design. The only hard selling point would be the split cockpit (or maybe not). It is cool for a race car, kind has a rallye / co-pilot style. Not sure which side is the drive side though – maybe this is to be an autonomous driving car. Because of the way this casting makes you dip into your imagination just like the previous musings, it is a really fun casting and with the scarcity that it pops up in the mainline, this might be one to keep your eyes on if you are a longevity collector. Right now, there are no premiums on this casting and there are not many versions to collect. The red version shown here is a mid-2019 casting and is still easy to find.

Thank you,

Collector Quentin

I own the actual diecast pictured in these posts. However, all packaging artwork, Mattel or Hot Wheels logos, paint descriptions and wheel descriptions in regard to the Hot Wheels versions are copyrights of the Mattel toy company.