With three vehicles in the first set of cars, Chevrolet was the best-represented brand in the Hot Wheels вЂњSweet Sixteen.вЂќ Camaros, Corvettes, and El Caminos featured in period advertising for the new toys, perhaps most prominently on the cover of the Mattel product catalog for 1968, which featured an image of an impossibly shiny gold Camaro zooming across a section of orange Hot Wheels track. The issue was, according to Pascal, that вЂњthe Corvette die-cast car was made and released to the public in 1968, a few months before the new Corvette was actually unveiled.вЂќ (Pascal also owns a key component in another Corvette in MattelвЂ™s history, the 1975 prototype of BarbieвЂ™s 1976 C3 Star вЂ™Vette.) And he was thus able to integrate many of these styling cues into his work on another of the first Hot Wheels models, the Custom Corvette. During his time at GM, according to Hot Wheels lore, Bradley may have worked on or seen the designs for the forthcoming C3 Corvette. But not before he had a key, and somewhat disruptive, role in ushering another Chevrolet icon into the toy car realm. Elliot Handler, the president of Mattel, saw that car in a driveway and told Bradley to make a car like that for Hot Wheels.вЂќ The result: another first-year model named the Custom Fleetside.Д«radley was concerned that Hot Wheels would not succeed, so he remained at Mattel for just a few years, departing in 1969 to create his own design consultancy. вЂњBack then, he drove a really wild-looking 1964 El Camino that he had customized. вЂњHe moved out to California to work for Mattel,вЂќ Pascal says. A graduate of the industrial design program at the prestigious Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Bradley was a prominent car customizer when he was hired by General Motors in 1962, where he worked for four years before being poached by Mattel to lead its new toy car project. вЂњThe first designer for Hot Wheels was a guy named Harry Bradley,вЂќ Pascal says. WhatвЂ™s more, nearly all of these original designs were penned by a gentleman directly connected to the Chevrolet brand. вЂњSo when you talk about the history of Hot Wheels, it all started with the Camaro.вЂќ вЂњI call this the Dead Sea Scrolls of the hobby, the original blueprint for the first Hot Wheels car ever made,вЂќ says Pascal. But the earliest one, from 1967, was the plan for the Custom Camaro. Most of the preproduction plans were ascribed to early 1968, just prior to the brandвЂ™s rollout that summer.

This position of primacy was little more than a rumor until Pascal purchased some blueprints that Hot Wheels designers used to make the molds for the original 1968 run of 16 cars. вЂњChevrolet definitely has a special place with Hot Wheels, and one reason for that is that the first ever made was a Camaro,вЂќ Pascal asserts.

Drawing of 1968 el camino chevy