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The Hot Wheels Rip Rod Gets an EcoBoost Heart, It’s Alive

You know how they say men are basically little boys trapped in more mature bodies, right? Well, if someone asks you to back that up with some arguments, you can tell them we like to transform our childhood toy cars into real-life, drivable tire-shredding machines and continue with the fun outdoors.
Hot Wheels Rip Rod it's alive 1 photo
Photo: screenshot from Youtube
Ask every guy out there what toy car would he turn into a real thing and there are high chances it will be a Hot Wheels model. And time showed this really happens, as famous models like the Twin Mill and the Deora being recreated as full scale working machines.

The next stop takes us now to the Rip Rod, a 2014 collection model representing a modern reinterpretation of the old school hot rods. And since it looks so sick, the scale model got a life size counterpart unveiled at last year’s SEMA show.

It was a simple non-functional display concept back then, but Ford decided to give it life and has now fitted it with a 1-liter EcoBoost turbocharged inline three-cylinder engine.

Three cylinders for a Hot Wheels? That’s outrageous!

You might flip the table screaming it should have come with a V8 because it’s evoking the oldschool machines, but don’t forget the Hot Wheels Rip Rod is a modern interpretation of the hot rods. And as you can see, modern times have brought us small turbocharged engines and electric assistance.

The engine in this case comes straight from a Fiesta SFE, where it was cranking 123 hp and 125 lb-ft (170 Nm) of torque while returning a generous combined fuel consumption of 39 mpg (6 l/100 km). We’re pretty sure it got modified to bite more from under the Rip Rod’s shell, but unfortunately there are no detailed specs at the moment.

Still, you can almost feel how good the engine fits the single seater in the new video bellow. It does look like it can rip things apart, especially tires...

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