ONTARIO, Calif. — The couple that crushes cars together, stays together. At least that’s how it works for Darron and Rebecca Schnell, the smash-em-up husband-and-wife duo who’ll climb into a pair of monster trucks and careen across the floor at Toyota Arena this weekend.

“If we ever have a disagreement, we just put our helmets on and it's 'may the best person win,'” said Darron Schnell, who’ll be driving the new Race Ace — a flame-painted, life-sized incarnation of the miniaturized toy that’s part of the Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live tour kicking off Saturday in Ontario.

What You Need To Know

  • Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live is a family-oriented monster truck competition that uses life-sized versions of Hot Wheels toys

  • Bigfoot, Bone Shaker and Tiger Shark are among the trucks that will wheelie, long jump and crush cars

  • Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live kicks off a 10-city tour Saturday at the Toyota Arena in Ontario

  • The tour will feature a female driver for the first time

The Race Ace is one of seven larger-than-life trucks that will be menacing the arena to the delight of paying fans, including the new 12-foot-tall Mega Wrex dino-inspired monstrosity and Midwest Madness, the first collaboration between Hot Wheels and one of monster trucks’ massive stars: Bigfoot.

“It takes a lot of grit and a lot of being able to remove your brain and understanding that these trucks are very safe and that you’re not going to get hurt,” said Rebecca Schnell, who was an emergency room nurse before crewing for her husband and, in early 2020, climbing into the cab herself to sit behind the wheel.

This weekend Schnell will be driving Midwest Madness. She’s the first female driver on the Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live tour, which made its deafening debut at the Toyota Arena in 2019 before morphing into the less bombastic Hot Wheels Ultimate Drive-Thru Experience during COVID last year.

Part drive-in movie theater, part monster truck show, part rollercoaster ride, that event was set up as a mile-long drive that attendees experienced in their own vehicles, past Hot Wheels cars and trucks arranged in different settings.

The Monster Trucks Live event is far more action-packed. The 2.5-hour show consists of five competitions, starting with each monster truck doing a wheelie across the arena floor, followed by a donut contest, a long jump competition and an intermission appearance from a trio of high-flying freestyle motocrossers and Megasaurus. A car-eating, fire-belching metal dinosaur that is three stories tall and weighs more than 50,000 pounds, Megasaurus is a fan favorite beloved for lifting, crushing and chomping itty-bitty sedans. 

Returning from intermission, the carnage continues as salvaged cars that had been lined up like bystanders to the action get crushed by the monster trucks that smash them two at a time. Whoever gets to the finish line wins. 

“We are crushing cars, not just jumping over dirt mounds,” said the event’s production manager, Mike McFarlin. “People love to see cars crushed.”

Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live is a partnership between the Raycom-Legacy Content Company in Charlotte, N.C., and the Mattel toy company in El Segundo, which has transformed dozens of its most popular miniature cars into life-sized, fully operational vehicles.

Bone Shaker, Tiger Shark, V8 Bomber and Demo Derby are among its most popular miniature toys that have been turned into drivable monster trucks that will also be competing at Toyota Arena this Saturday and Sunday. The Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live tour heads to the Pechanga Arena in San Diego the weekend of Sept. 25 before continuing across the country.