Larry Wood always dreamed of creating far-out cars. But as an auto designer in the late 1960s, Wood realized that he might spend decades reworking door handles if he stayed on in Detroit. "I never really got to design a car," Wood recalls. "The guys who had been there 30 years were the only ones who got to do that." Disgusted by door handles, Wood fled the Motor City in 1969 and moved to California, where he went to work at Hot Wheels shortly after the line of toy cars made its commercial début.

Wood is now chief designer at the company and certainly not the only Detroit expert on staff. Much of the Hot Wheels design team consists of refugees from the auto industry - a little-known tradition that began when Harry Bradley, the toy line's original designer, escaped to Mattel's headquarters in 1967 with a set of plans for the 1968 Corvette. Bradley, who walked with a limp because of polio, smuggled the plans out of the GM Styling Center by stuffing them into his cane.

Today, Wood receives lots of portfolios from frustrated car designers, and who can blame them? Hot Wheels releases an average of 100 models a year, selling more "cars" than all of Detroit's Big Three put together. The lure is obvious - Hot Wheels designers get to create a whole car, although at 1:64 scale, a few of the details get lost in the translation.

Much like at real car companies, many Hot Wheels designs are derived from market research. "They basically tell us they need a hot rod here or a sports car there," Wood explains. Many designers develop their plans using 3-D rendering programs like Alias and form-Z, although some of the old-school designers (like Wood) still draw by hand. New designs are then transformed into prototypes slightly larger than the toy's final size. All in all, the design and tooling cost of each car runs upward of US$60,000.

Although no one will ever drive the cars he creates, Wood still gets a kick from designing toys - even after 20 years in the business. "How many people can afford a real Porsche?" he asks. "Pushing a car around on a desk is closer to driving the real car than most people will ever get. Plus, we've never had a recall."

To this day, Larry is still with Mattel still designing and still a large part of Hot Wheels. He is the longest mainstay within the company when it comes to designers.

Howard Ress:

Howard came into the scene as Ira was leaving. Like some of the other diecast designers, he came from Detroit as well. He did not create many cars from what I recall. Probably less than 10 or 15 within a couple of years. After a short stint designer cars, he went into other toy departments within Mattel. His most famous and notable car put out was probably  a cross between the Sand Crab and the Peepin' Bomb.

Ultimately, he left Mattel and went into producing his own art such as paintings of which I believe he stills does to this day. Howard attended school early in life majoring in Art, but like others in that era and schooling, ended up producing other than art in the traditional sense.

Howard was the one who brought the well known designer Larry Woods into the scene when he needed help getting new artwork out.

I am hoping to add other designers here in the near future. If one of you Mattel employees or designers would like to write your own bio and add it here, then please contact me via email from my home page.

Other designers to be added:

Former Designers: Ira Gilford & Gary Saffer
Current designers: Nathan Proch, Phil Riehlman, Miq Willmott, & Mike McClone