Star Wars Toys Are Awesome, But What About Star Wars Cars?

By David Wharton | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Star Wars has a long history of badass toys, beginning with the amazing Kenner line my generation played with and blew up and dropped down into the Great Pit of Carkoon (my parents’ garbage disposal). That line had so many amazing toy vehicles, from Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon to the towering AT-AT walkers. One thing you never really associate with Star Wars, however, is cars. I don’t mean flying cars or cloud cars. I mean actual, on-the-ground-with-wheels cars cars. But if the Star Wars universe did have some normal old cars puttering around, they might have looked like this.

SWcar1

Jalopnik reader phenotyp created the Star Wars car designs while working for Hasbro back in 2008, and he shared his story with the auto blog a while back. As phenotyp recalls:

…one of the dudes I’d worked with called me out of the blue and asked me if I’d like to work on one of their Lucasfilm license projects. The wanted to make a line of cars based on Star Wars characters, and wondered if I’d like to throw in.

Um, does the Pope shit in the woods?

Yeah, that’s a deal I would have agreed to in a heartbeat, and my artistic talent is limited to drawing stick figures that somehow manage to be unconvincing as stick figures. So how did it work? How do you even bring normal cars into a universe where flying cars are the norm? Phenotyp says he would be given a specific Star Wars character to serve as inspiration, then he’d design a car that riffed on that character’s visual traits. So here’s one inspired by the prequel’s Superdroids.

Superdroid

Or the godawful “Roger Roger” Federation droids. I would buy one of these cars just so I could drive it off a cliff.

FedDroid

Here’s one based on a far less annoying droid, the creepy robot bounty hunter IG-88.

IG-88

Or how about one for the Clone Troopers to use during shore leave?

CloneTrooper

His Jedi-inspired designs are where things get really fun. He worked the color of their lightsabers into each auto, starting with Mace Windus’ purple bad motherfucker…

Mace

…and Kit Fisto’s more traditional green. Phenotyp said:

All the Jedi designs had a glowing “lightsaber” thing incorporated. This one I wanted to be sort of a Lotus GT1-like car, with a bunch of green pipes over the ‘engine’ that mimicked his tentacle-dreds, and an asymmetrical roof scoop like the folds and layers of his robe.

KitFisto

And last but not least, Darth Maul. For this one, phenotyp said:

And my favorite, Darth Maul. Twin lightsabers, as if it’s got an engine at both axles, and matte black with gloss red to look like his face.

Maul

Sadly, Hasbro never produced the Star Wars car toys, so they’ll just remain a curious sci-fi footnote. Unless you’ve got a 3D printer and some free time, then have at it.

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