Is a Scale Wind Tunnel for Hot Wheels the Coolest Toy?

Gadget-maker Fun-Tech-Lab has just the thing for model car lovers: a scale wind tunnel that lets you visualize the airflow around toy cars just like they are tested in professional wind tunnels.

If you haven’t found the time to build your own wind tunnel, as described in this Design News article, Fun-Tech-Lab’s Winsible tunnel could be just the thing for letting you envision your tiny die-cast model car cleaving the air as it tears down the road.

The tunnel blows wind past the model of your choice, with adjustable air speed and variable smoke density and patterns to let you zero in on specific areas of interest. A wrap-around window provides profile and overhead plan views of the airflow.

Windsible is available in three sizes, one for Hot Wheels-sized 1:64-scale models, one for 1:24-scale models, and one that is big enough for 1:18-scale cars. Pricing goes up correspondingly with size, at $239, $339, and $429, respectively. The 1:64-scale tunnel is about the size of a carton of cigarettes, while the 1:18-scale tunnel stretches about three feet long.

Windsible’s features include interior lighting, a taillight, variable wind speed, an indicator for the level of the fog-making fluid, and the ability to switch between miles per hour and kilometers on the simulated vehicle speed indicator. Fun-Tech-Lab founder, CEO, and partner Steven Gou says that he conceived the idea for the wind tunnel product while an engineering student at Cranfield University in the UK.

Cranking up the fan speed in the Winsible wind tunnel.

When Gou’s demonstration model attracted online support for production, he contracted a designer to create Windsible’s appearance. “Somebody (online) said, ‘Take my money,’ even though it was very ugly, Gou recalled. “So we hired a real designer from a vehicle company.”

The result is a sleek white box that recalls the original Star Trek shuttlecraft. The red “taillights” on the back even seem like they could simulate rocket nozzles.

Gou says that he has found the business aspect of Fun-Tech-Lab to be more challenging than the engineering of the product. “For engineering you just calculate how to solve the problem,” he said. “The method is in your book!”

The 1:64-scale Windsible fits easily on your shelf.

Business is not so cut-and-dried. “To do the business you should measure people’s thinking and how much they will pay is hard to calculate,” Gou said.

Windsible wind tunnels are scheduled to ship in early 2025. Meanwhile, Gou already has plans for Fun-Tech-Lab’s follow-on product. It is a USB charger called “Helldog” that is styled to look like a gas pump, with readouts indicating the charging process in place of the flow of gasoline and the sale price.

Ultimately, Gou says that he envisions fusing his engineering know-how with business techniques to do a better job, rather than choosing one path over the other. “I think about this question for a long time,” he said. While he was leaning toward sticking with engineering, he realized that he could be a better engineer employing business know-how. “In fact, I can use some business ways to solve the product problem, like how the factory can be controlled,” he concluded.