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Ford Motor Company Creates The World’s Largest Hot Wheels Loop

Today was National Take Your Child To Work Day, in case you missed the memo, and Ford Motor Company had something very special planned for the sons and daughters of its employees: the world’s largest Hot Wheels track loop.

Standing at over 12 feet tall, the journey to creating the world record-shattering, custom Hot Wheels loop was mostly initiated by Ford Dynamometer Technician Matt West and his six year-old son, Blade. The two have a history of creating such Hot Wheels loops at home in their free time, having erected some as tall as five feet.

What “started as part-fun, part-physics lesson with my son at home,” said West, became an installation to engage many more children in the field of engineering. “On a track, a Hot Wheels car can only go so fast, so carrying the momentum of the vehicle through an entire loop is harder than you might think,” West remarked.

Ford Hotwheels world record loop 02

While a cursory glance at the project might suggest that the path from daydream to reality was as simple as assembling the necessary parts, things like mass and velocity had to be considered. For this loop, the Hot Wheels car starts its approach from a height of over three stories, in order to gain enough momentum to carry it through the loop’s entire, nearly 40-foot circumference.

We can’t help but wonder if there’s a separate world record for Matchbox-branded toy cars that we could seize…

Aaron Birch is an automotive enthusiast and writer/filmmaker from Detroit, MI. As a rule, he only buys cars older than himself.

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