Turbofire

Turbofire (1969)

The Turbofire is one of the four fully Mattel designed concept cars released in the 1969 product line. All previous concept cars had been based on existing full sized custom show cars. The other three, also designed by Ira Gilford, are the Twinmill, Splittin' Image and the Torero. Although first issued in 1969, the Turbofire was produced for several years and as such is one of the most common redines.

The rear hood on the Turbofire opens, exposing a turbine engine. The only detail on the Turbofire is the painted tailight. One Turbofire has been found with painted vents on the hood, however, its origin in unknown.

Above and below: side, front and rear shots of the Turbofire.

All Turbofires are US made. There are no known casting variations among production Turbofires.

An unspun Turbofire disassembled to show the parts.

There are minor trademark and copyright text size differences on some bases.

Nearly all Turbofires have white interiors. Among production Turbofires, the dark interior has only been found in red cars. About 1% of red Turbofires have the dark interior. All production Turbofires have clear glass.

Over 95% of all Turbofires were assembled with bearing type wheels. Capped wheels can be found but they are not common. Some Turbofires have a mixture of bearing wheels and capped wheels. Although the wheel type presents opportunities for unusual variations, it has no particular influence on the value of a Turbofire.

A magenta Turbofire with bearing wheels on the front axle and cap wheels in the rear.

The Turbofire came in all of the spectraflame colors and a multitude of shades. The tail light is usually painted in an opaque international orange color, however certain colors have no tail light paint at all. See the chart at the end for color rarities.

One interesting peculiarity is that some light green Turbofires have faded to the point where they appear to be unpainted. However, a close inspection of the inside of the fenderwells will reveal some tell tale remnants of the light green paint.

The Turbofire at right is faded lime.

Two complete preproduction Turbofires are known. The purple is handpainted, coming from the famous Room 1111 at Irvine. The gold one turned up on eBay in 2003. The preproduction cars have a casting variation which clearly distinguishes them from the production casting.

Two prototype Turbofires flank a red production piece.

On the preproduction piece, the rear lid opens wide and the engine exhaust pipes extend to the rear of the base. Similar to early Ford J cars, there is no travel stop, so the hood could be extended backwards too far and could easily be broken off. On the production piece, the travel stop was added to the base, on top of the tail pipes. The peg on the hood was added and and the hinge was redesigned, adding metal to strengthen it.

The Turbofire casting was reproduced by the Muky toy company in Argentina. They issued several variations of the Turbofire.

Color chart

US COLORS:	COMMENTS:
aqua	common
blue	common
gold	common
green	common
lime	common
antifreeze	common
olive	common
dark blue	common
orange	common
red/white interior	common
light blue	uncommon
purple	uncommon
rose	uncommon
brown	uncommon
emerald green	uncommon
ice blue	uncommon
chocolate brown	uncommon
faded lime	hard to find
hot pink	hard to find
magenta	hard to find
red/dark interior	very hard to find
light ("apple") green	rare

Turbofires, from left: lime, antifreeze, light green and green.

Photo & info credits: Ted Gray

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