Turbofire
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.
A Typical Turbofire
The rear hood on the Turbofire opens, exposing a turbine engine.
Front and rear details of the Turbofire
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.
Casting Variations
All Turbofires are US made.
There are no known casting variations among production Turbofires.
An Unspun Production Turbofire
There are minor trademark and copyright text size differences on some bases.
Interior Colors
Nearly all Turbofires have white interiors.
Among production Turbofires, the dark interior has only been found in red cars.
White vs. Dark Interior
About 1% of red Turbofires have the dark interior.
All production Turbofires have clear glass.
Wheel Variations
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.
Turbofire with mixed wheel types
Although the wheel type presents opportunities for unusual variations, it has no particular influence on the value of a Turbofire.
Paint Colors
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.
A nearly complete Turbofire rainbow
Light Green - Antifreeze - Apple Green - Green
Painted and unpainted tail lights
One interesting peculiarity is that some light green Turbofires have faded to the point where they appear to be unpainted.
A faded light green Turbofire
However, a close inspection of the inside of the fenderwells will reveal some tell tale remnants of the light green paint.
Traces of light green paint
Preproduction
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.
Purple and Gold Prototypes
The preproduction cars have a casting variation which clearly distinguishes them from the production casting.
Prototype vs. Production Hoods and Engine Compartments
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.
MUKY
The Turbofire casting was reproduced by the Muky toy company in Argentina.
They issued a bunch of variations of the Turbofire under the name of ??
One of the many Muky variations with its original box
Turbofire Color Chart
This chart lists the rarity of colors on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is the hardest to find.
| COLOR | INTERIOR | RARITY | COMMENT |
| Antifreeze | White | 2 | |
| Apple | White | 10 | |
| Aqua | White | 1 | |
| Blue | White | 1 | |
| Brown | White | 5 | |
| Chocolate | White | 6 | |
| Dark Blue | White | 3 | |
| Emerald | White | 5 | |
| Faded Lime | White | 8 | Looks unpainted |
| Gold | White | 1 | |
| Green | White | 1 | |
| Hot Pink | White | 8 | |
| Ice Blue | White | 5 | |
| Light Blue | White | 4 | |
| Lime | White | 1 | |
| Magenta | White | 8 | |
| Olive | White | 2 | |
| Orange | White | 3 | No Tail Light Paint |
| Purple | White | 4 | |
| Red | White | 3 | No Tail Light Paint |
| Red | Dark | 9 | No Tail Light Paint |
| Rose | White | 4 |