After getting my Telsa Model 3 Performance in 2020, I was looking for model cars. Hot Wheels make a Model 3 in various colours, unfortunatley they don't sell a blue one with the dark grey wheels like my real car. Obviously the answer is to buy three cars and swap parts. I could've actually managed with two but I wanted the white car to look like a friend's white Model 3 performance, which has the same design wheels as my blue car did but in silver

The red car was the first one to be taken apart and with typical Tesla build quality it just kind of fell apart.

Of course it didn't fall apart by itself, I took this 'sacrificial' red car apart to see how it's made. A 3.5mm drill, used very carefully at low speed, makes easy work of the rivets.

The plan was to do the same with the others, with M2 tap and some tiny M2 screws coming along with push-fit axle tube. Maybe I took this a bit too seriously, I didn't realise that the white car comes with a white interior so that was going in the red car, again to make the white car accurate.

I was going to carefully sand down the nubs on the back of the wheels to reduce the track and make it look more realistic, also cutting the axles to length so they aren't too long like the originals.

There's a certain irony in the packing material two of the cars were shipped in containing shredded Hot Wheels Model S and a Jag F-type cards.

I ended up buying some custom axle tubes and ends to re-make those, the ends glue in place after the axles are cut to length.

I bought a special fine cut saw for cutting the axles without crushing them, according to California it causes cancer...

Blue and white cars complete, well apart from a missing rear wheel on the white car. As it happens, the chrome on the wheels is very easy to scratch.

The red car was reassembled with the spare parts from the others.

All three cars together