A 1975 Volkswagen T2B, the same generation as the DJN-623 bus. Representative image. Photo: Niels de Wit / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
The orange Volkswagen T2 in Mattel’s Matchbox The Movie die-cast line has a Hungarian registration printed front and rear: DJN-623. That number belongs to a 1976 T2B that David Sipos has owned in Budapest since 2013, and Sipos says the bus wears a different plate in the finished film.
Sipos set out the timeline on a website he published about the van, last updated September 10. In May, he writes, a die-cast collector friend sent him a low-resolution screenshot of the Matchbox packaging from the series’ first announcement, and the plate was legible. He assumed it was a pre-production sample. When the cars went on sale in the summer he ordered several anyway, opened one, and found his registration on it.
His page includes photos of the 1:64 model sitting on the cobblestones in front of the full-size bus. Both plates read the same.
Two buses for one role
According to Sipos, Mattel’s project was looking for a T2 in 2024, when it ran under the working title “Convoy.” Director Sam Hargrave had pictured a poison-green early T2A, Sipos writes, and changed his mind after seeing a photo of the orange T2B. The T2B is the post-1973 update, recognizable by front indicators mounted above the headlights instead of below them.
The choice meant the production needed a matching double, and Sipos had one: a freshly restored turquoise 1977 T2B. Both vans were rented together. The 1977 bus was painted orange, filmed in Bratislava and converted into a kit car that a stunt driver could steer from the back. Sipos says it can’t be returned to the road. DJN-623 worked in Budapest, where its divided vent windows were swapped for single panes because full panes were easier to source for both vans. Sipos dates the downtown shoot to February 15, 2025, and passersby filmed it on set along the Danube. He calls DJN-623 the hero vehicle, the one the actors drove, which puts it in the company of the screen cars we’ve tracked down before, with the difference that its owner still drives it.
That fits the public record. Film New Europe reported in March 2025 that the Apple production was shooting in Hungary and Slovakia. Apple’s press page lists John Cena and Jessica Biel at the top of the cast, and Sipos says both filmed their scenes with his bus. When we covered the October 9 premiere, none of Apple’s releases named a single vehicle in the film. The toy aisle was more specific.
The toy is built from both vans
Mattel released the casting in two versions. Seller listings on eBay describe the standard car as No. 10 in the 12-car Matchbox The Movie series, under casting number MB1639, and name it a 1973 Volkswagen T2B, the casting’s model year, three years older than Sipos’s bus. One of those listings asks $4.99. A second version in the Moving Parts range has an opening sliding door.
Sipos points to a roof detail that suggests Mattel’s designers worked from photos of both rental vans. Years before filming, his 1977 double was fitted with a non-factory sunroof. The standard Matchbox car has that sunroof. The Moving Parts car doesn’t. The most common version of the toy therefore pairs the stunt double’s roof with the hero bus’s registration, and if you’re sorting through pegs for one of each, the roof is the quickest tell between them.
What Mattel has said
The only explanation on record from Mattel is an informal reply. Sipos says he wrote to a senior manager at Mattel headquarters, whom he doesn’t name, and publishes the answer: the plate probably came from “reference photos of the bus pre production,” because “even internally movie details were a little scarce,” so the team wouldn’t have known the film would run a different plate. The manager congratulated him on owning a Matchbox version of his car.
Sipos labels that reply a “reasonable inference,” not a confirmed account, and he doesn’t describe the plate as anyone’s mistake. We found no public statement from Mattel about it. The reply doesn’t say whether anyone at Mattel checked that DJN-623 was a live registration on a privately owned vehicle. Sipos doesn’t say whether his rental agreement covered merchandise. He says the agreement and the vehicle identification numbers are held privately and can be reviewed on request.
Fifty years in Budapest
By Sipos’s account, the bus came to Budapest by freight train in 1976 as a delivery to the Hungarian Water Works, where a young employee, Mr. Thaly, took it off the train. When the utility replaced the van in 1984, Thaly bought it for his family. It received the DJN-623 registration in 1993, passed to Sipos in 2013 and got an anti-corrosion repaint in 2017.
Sipos has since handed Thaly one of the Matchbox cars, nearly 50 years after Thaly unloaded the full-size one.
Matchbox The Movie has been streaming on Apple TV since October 9, and the die-cast is on sale with DJN-623 on both bumpers. Should Mattel have cleared a private owner’s registration before printing it on a toy, or is a 1:64 copy of your own bus, plate included, a windfall no owner would refuse?
Sources: David Sipos, myvwbecamematchbox.fun (owner’s account, photos and published correspondence with Mattel); Apple TV press page for Matchbox The Movie; Film New Europe production report, March 27, 2025; eBay seller listings for the 2026 Matchbox The Movie 1973 Volkswagen T2B.
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