REVIEW -- Hot Wheels Lotus Evija

I'll begin my first review for LaLD by saying that I was very excited to hear that Hot Wheels was going to make an Evija casting. I haven't seen an Evija in real life, but, I love the lines and the stance this car has. I couldn't wait to paint one up and photograph it. You wouldn't believe my disappointment when I held it in my hands for the first time... I know $1 is a tight budget but considering what Hot Wheels and Matchbox has made in the basic range, I was thoroughly disappointed by this... mess. The color choice is okay, I'm not sure it 100% matches the look of the Evija, although there are plenty of pictures of real cars with this same color way. The real issues come down to the proportions. The front arches are ridiculously tall in proportion and it makes it look like those hardnose hot wheels from the early 2000s. The rear arches are also excessively tall, and that was a common feature for the old Fatbax hot wheels. The rear wheel wells are positioned too far down so getting a nice stance on this casting is near impossible without modification. I'm not a fan of the raised rear spoiler, but considering that it's supposed to be a hot set of wheels I'll let it slide. The spoiler could've definitely been implemented much better, that's for sure. The lip above the front grill, or vent, whatever you want to call it is too thick and gives it a bit of overbite. I'm assuming this is to make it durable for play. This feature drives me insane but again, I'll let it slide. Another thing that I don't like but I'm okay with are the headlight tampos. Hot wheels cars get "tampoed" from either the top, sides, front, or rear. The slope of the front end makes it impossible for correctly shaped headlights, and that's how you get warped effects like these tiny, too short headlight tampos. The last acceptable error that probably can't be fixed within the budget is the front splitter being part of the base. Not a fan. There's one thing that's going to really hurt this Evija casting further down the road, and it's the color break created by the interior extending out to the body. It works fine with this color way, but it's impossible to make it look right with a solid color. Either make the interior the same color as the body (which I think would look terrible in any color other than silver, black, or gray), or make the interior a conventional color and end up with a strange color combo (look at the new recolor in red, for example). The swirls left from injection molding do not bother me because of the price point. Altogether, I couldn't take a single picture that I was happy with from any angle. In summary, a collection of minor errors in the casting spoil the look. To prove my point, I've included a picture of my customized version that addresses every single one of these issues. This is definitely a car best left to orange tracks or an array of tools to fix it. Or maybe I'm just nitpicking. I'll leave that to you.