About

About Hot World Customs

[Updated 3/22/2015]

Original Site Launch: February 2002

The question has been asked many times – Who and What is Hot World Customs???

“My Name is Dip (alias dipstick), I am a diecast Collector turned customizer and it has been three days since I bought my last diecast…….”    Oops, wrong meeting!

Anyway, I have been collecting cars, really since childhood.  A deep fascination for cars at a young age had me buying Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars every time I went to the store.  These little cars became my favorite and, seemingly, my only toys.  OK, I did have a couple other things, but not much as I didn’t really like anything else.  I played with them for hours and hours combining them with my model trains and building an entire town in the basement of my childhood home.  I would play for days: car chases, train wrecks, emergency situations – it all happened in my town.  Looking back and now in perspective, it was not a very safe little city!!

Time passed, age set in and the little cars were packed away and moved with me as an adult, hoping one day they would be unpacked.  About  15 years ago I ran across the boxes and suddenly the passion I had as a child was re-ignited.   The fun, the cars, the flashy paint – I found myself in a toy aisle buying a couple little cars which soon became many more little cars until, in a very short time, I had built my “new” collection to thousands. I collect many different manufacturers – Hot Wheels, Matchbox, Johnny Lightning, Siku, Majorette, Maisto, Impy, Playart, Jada and Muscle Machines.  Like everyone,  I went through the NASCAR phase and ultimately sold all of my NASCAR pieces. I had bins of cars.  And then it happened, one day I couldn’t find a car I liked – the tampos were hideous, the colors  were even worse.  “Why didn’t they do that as a convertible?”,  “Why do they have animal prints down they side of that great looking truck?”  Wait…… What if I took the car apart and painted it the way I wanted ?  What if I chopped off the roof and I made it a convertible?

My passion for customizing had started – getting online I started to find a few individuals also doing the same. Then more and then more suddenly there was an online club, then Ebay started a category due to the craze.  More and more people found customizing.

About 12 years ago a man in the custom hobby began making parts – convertible boots, side pipes, engine mod pieces  – this encouraged the hobby even further.  Obsessed with the hobby and growing more excited about the growth I bought that company – at that time it was known as Hot World Customs, the name sake of this site – The business evolved into the site we run today known as www.mini-motors.com .

It was a dream of mine to accompany that business with a How-To site that would give the Custom Community a foundation for the hobby – a central location that would have a master reference of information that could be referred to when needed and present fresh and innovative ideas on a regular basis.  Well, Fred B. and the Van Designs group beat me to it and created a wonderful reference site, but through the changes in the hobby also come changes in peoples lives and we came to an agreement to merge the all ready great information from that original effort with a number of new ideas and develop this site.  Their original content was phenomenal, and we have taken that to yet another level with our additions and the contributors we have aligned ourselves with.

The staples of the process are here:  What to do, How to paint, body prep, wheel changes, etc.  But we also have insight, custom ideas, and project how-to’s.  It is all about Customs – JUST customs – processes, ideas, methods, “fodder”, new casting to use, we have it all. The individuals involved in the site are some key individuals in the custom community – either by reputation, achievement or skill.  They deliver the details, deliver the ideas and deliver the information.

My focus, as owner of this site, is to assist with the content YOU want to see, assist in the development of projects you want to know about and find the products you want to hear about.

Updated 3/22/2015:  We are now taking the site to yet another level with the transition to the new BLOG format.  Bringing the largest custom diecast site to an interactive state with login and posting capabilities, sort and search functions, gallery technology. multi media and more.   Another step to making Hot World Customs  “The Greatest Custom Die Cast Informational Site on the Web”……………………

Have a GREAT DAY and Keep on Customizing!!

Dipstick