Spend the day with Mr. Hot Wheels
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MotorTranscript
00:00 (soft music)
00:02 My name's Larry Wood.
00:09 I worked at Hot Wheels for 40 years
00:11 and I'm still doing consultant work for the last five.
00:13 So I've been there quite a few years.
00:16 We're here at Elwood's Garage
00:17 and it's where I work on my cars all the time.
00:19 Got Hot Wheels, got real cars, got everything.
00:21 I started Hot Wheels in '69
00:23 and at the time it was a fairly small business at Mattel.
00:27 Barbie, of course, was the number one.
00:29 So Hot Wheels, through the years,
00:31 started growing a little bit and a little bit.
00:32 I was there 15 years all by myself.
00:35 And finally, all of a sudden, when the kids who grew up
00:39 wanted to get toys for their sons,
00:41 they just remembered Hot Wheels.
00:43 So they went back and Hot Wheels exploded.
00:45 My story about Hot Wheels and cars in general
00:49 starts when I was a kid.
00:51 My dad was a football coach
00:52 and one day he found one of his students
00:55 reading a car magazine instead of doing his football practice
01:00 or whatever it was.
01:01 So he brought the car magazine home.
01:02 It was one of the small Rod and Customs
01:05 or whatever it was at the time.
01:06 And threw it on the counter and just, you know,
01:09 he just wanted to get rid of it.
01:10 Well, I read that thing from top to bottom.
01:13 That changed my life.
01:14 During the summer, our route was on the way to the beach
01:19 and all the rich people would drive by
01:20 in their new '50s cars going to the beach.
01:22 And I would sit on the side of the road
01:24 and just watch the '59 Caddy's and the '56 Ford Crown Fix
01:28 and the colors and everything from the '50s
01:31 and the cars going by.
01:32 And that was what I did during the summer for fun.
01:35 In high school, I was the guy that drew everybody's cool car
01:39 or what their car wanted to be.
01:40 I once got an interview where they asked me,
01:42 "What did you think of high school?"
01:43 And the only thing I remember about high school
01:44 is the math paper didn't have lines
01:46 so I could draw cars on the math paper.
01:48 I didn't do too good in high school,
01:50 but the passion of being able to sketch
01:53 and draw a car, which I had an idea,
01:56 and again, reading the car magazines
01:57 about how customs were made.
01:59 I mean, George Barris, how he did his cars and everything.
02:01 I said, "Man, I'd love to do that for a living."
02:04 I opened up a magazine one day and I was,
02:08 I think it was Motor Trend or something,
02:09 but it had an article about Art Center in Los Angeles.
02:12 And it said, "Learn to draw cars."
02:14 Well, I'd been drawing cars for all my buddies
02:16 all these years.
02:17 So I called my mom and said,
02:19 "Okay, I guess I should go to college."
02:21 And so we put together a little portfolio
02:23 and I sent it to Art Center and lo and behold,
02:25 I got accepted, which was a real shock.
02:27 It was the first time somebody actually graded me
02:29 on drawing something.
02:30 It changed my life completely.
02:32 So that's what got me going
02:33 and I ended up in Detroit at Ford.
02:36 During Ford, we all owned Corvettes and we had a club
02:39 called Co-Fa-Mo-Co.
02:40 Corvette owners of Ford Motor Car Company.
02:42 So it was fun.
02:43 We always told them if you built something
02:45 that would beat it, we'd buy it.
02:46 Detroit was great.
02:47 Got to do cars, had a great time.
02:50 The politics and the snow was just a bit much.
02:53 And when my buddies started coming back to California,
02:56 I realized that I wanted to come back to California.
02:58 I went to a party.
02:59 A friend of mine invited me to a party
03:00 down here in the South Bay.
03:02 And I came down and the party was going on.
03:04 I looked out and his kids were playing
03:06 with this orange track that had a loop in it.
03:08 These little cars were going through this orange track.
03:10 And I said, "Hey, that's pretty cool.
03:12 "What's that?"
03:12 And he says, "Well, I design Hot Wheels."
03:14 And he says, "But I don't like doing it."
03:15 He wasn't a car nut.
03:16 He just did it as a job.
03:18 He says, "I wanna do Matt Mason.
03:20 "I wanna do space and all that."
03:22 And I said, "I'll tell you what.
03:22 "You get me a job there.
03:23 "I'll do the cars.
03:24 "You go on and do your Matt Mason thing."
03:26 And it worked out.
03:27 I ended up being interviewed and I walked in.
03:30 And first day, I got to do a whole car.
03:33 And I've been there ever since.
03:34 And it's just been the greatest job drawing cars
03:37 and building whatever car you wanted to build.
03:39 When we were designing cars,
03:41 we would take pictures out of Hot Rod
03:43 and all the other magazines and put 'em on the walls
03:46 and say, "Are we gonna do this car or that car?"
03:48 And that's the fun part.
03:50 You get to do the car you really want,
03:51 the latest car, me.
03:53 I'd do Hot Rods, of course.
03:55 Hot Rods and Customs.
03:56 Probably the two of my best are the one
03:59 we called the Purple Passion,
04:00 which was a CHOP 49 Merc, the usual stuff.
04:03 Skirts and lowered with DeSoto grille and everything.
04:07 Became very popular.
04:08 But just before I left, at the very end,
04:10 I did a car called the Bone Shaker.
04:13 I was trying to come up with a,
04:14 I was doing a T Rat Rod,
04:16 and I was trying to figure out how to make it kinda cool.
04:18 Instead of a Model T grille,
04:20 I put a skull on the front
04:21 with a couple of hands holding the headlights.
04:23 And I thought, "Hey, this is a good gimmick."
04:25 And so we called it the Bone Shaker.
04:28 And that thing has been so popular.
04:30 The part I liked about Hot Wheels
04:32 was that I got to do a car,
04:34 the car I liked, but also the detail.
04:36 When I pick up a Hot Wheel and I flip it over,
04:38 I want the chassis to be right.
04:39 I want the oil pan to be right.
04:40 I want the exhaust system to be right.
04:42 You know, that's the kind of stuff that I'd enjoy.
04:44 Kids may not know the difference,
04:46 but if you're a car guy, you'd know the difference.
04:48 Through the years, we did different scales, too.
04:49 When you start doing a larger scale,
04:51 I did the Batmobile.
04:53 And boy, you talk about the detail in the Batmobile.
04:54 We actually scanned the whole car.
04:56 If you look close, it's got braided lines
04:58 with AN fittings on the end,
05:00 and it's got the right turbines in it and everything,
05:02 and the fuel pumps and all this stuff.
05:04 So that's the kind of stuff you could really get into.
05:06 It's surprising how many themes on a Hot Rod
05:09 you can come up with,
05:10 because here we are 45 years later,
05:12 and we're still making 32 Fords
05:14 with different engines in 'em or something like that.
05:17 And so the Hot Rod theme, as far as I'm concerned,
05:20 was the thing that keep Hot Wheels going.
05:22 (light music)
05:27 In all my life, I always liked big cars,
05:29 the Duesenbergs, the Packards, you know, cars like that.
05:32 But I couldn't afford those kind of cars.
05:33 So one day I was looking through Hemmings magazines,
05:35 and I saw a little ad for a 1932 Nash.
05:38 It was sitting in a field in Texas in a barn.
05:41 So I got a car and a trailer, and I went back,
05:43 and that was a big car.
05:45 We had to get a tow truck to tow it out of the mud,
05:47 drag it across the field.
05:48 So I got it back to California, tore it completely apart,
05:52 spent about a year, year and a half.
05:54 I even had to replace the wood in the body,
05:55 'cause it had been sitting in a stream at one time,
05:57 and the wood was rotten.
05:58 I was doing a wedding, and I dropped the people off,
06:01 and I drove around the corner,
06:02 and there was a freeway on-ramp right ahead of me,
06:03 and I was heading towards the freeway on-ramp,
06:05 and the front axle broke,
06:06 and ripped the fender and the wheel off.
06:08 Luckily, I was going 30 miles an hour instead of 75.
06:11 Well, this time I tore it all completely apart again,
06:13 and started all over.
06:14 Did it in a brighter color.
06:15 I actually had some custom wire wheels made for it, chrome.
06:18 The originals were painted.
06:20 Those were a real bear to make.
06:21 And this time I put a 454 Chevy in it,
06:23 which I gotta tell you, I like the 390 AMC motor better,
06:27 but it's got a Chevy in it, so that's what counts.
06:29 I worked at Hot Wheels for 40 years,
06:32 and it was getting to the point
06:34 where everything was becoming digital,
06:36 which is very efficient, and it does a fantastic job.
06:39 No two ways about it.
06:40 But I like the feel of a pen or a pencil on paper,
06:43 and I like the look of the pattern
06:45 and being able to change little things here and there.
06:48 So it was time for other people to take over.
06:51 So I decided that it was time to play with my own cars.
06:54 When this garage came up, it was just one of those things
06:56 that was a combination of luck of finding it,
06:59 and financially being able to finally afford it.
07:01 I can make noise, I can grind,
07:03 I can weld back in the corner.
07:04 I got two hands, I can build anything.
07:06 Then I had this bright idea when I retired
07:08 that I had to have something to do to keep me busy.
07:10 I had to get up in the morning,
07:11 and I had to go to work or else I'd go crazy.
07:14 So I started on this new project,
07:16 and I wanted to build a truck and trailer
07:17 to tow and go on vacation and stuff.
07:19 So I built a '38 Ford cab-over truck.
07:21 I had to lengthen the body,
07:23 'cause they were so short back then with my long legs.
07:25 I couldn't fit in it.
07:26 And then I had to narrow the sleeper,
07:28 and I handmade the bed.
07:29 Basically everything on the truck was handmade,
07:31 and it was just a great project.
07:33 I really enjoyed doing it.
07:34 So after that, I found a trailer,
07:36 and I found the trailer out in Michigan,
07:38 and had it brought back cross-country, and it was junk.
07:41 So I stripped the trailer, completely gutted it.
07:44 Absolutely nothing in it.
07:45 I had to redo some of the outside aluminum.
07:47 But the inside, I'm not a woodworker,
07:48 but I thought, hey, a guy did it 50 years ago,
07:50 I'll do it now.
07:51 So I got a saw, and I started cutting the pieces of wood,
07:54 and everything in that trailer started off as a two-by-four.
07:57 And I cut 'em down to the right thickness,
07:58 and I learned how to do it.
08:01 It's the way I feel.
08:02 If you got two hands, you can build anything.
08:04 After I got the trailer done, I got a little bored,
08:07 and I bought a '57 Ford wagon.
08:09 I always liked those.
08:10 It's got a 460 in it, so the mechanical stuff's done.
08:13 There's a lot of little things I have to do on it.
08:14 But I'm acting like I'm a designer in 1955 at Ford,
08:19 and Chevy just came out with the Nomad.
08:22 And oh, geez, what a nice-looking wagon.
08:24 I'm gonna design this wagon to take on the Chevy Nomad,
08:27 which Ford never did.
08:28 They didn't really do a deluxe wagon.
08:30 So I'm gonna take it with the Crown Vic
08:33 stainless over the top,
08:35 and I'm thinking of a woody theme.
08:38 I'm gonna do wood inside and some wood down the side.
08:40 You know, lower it with a set of wheels on it and everything.
08:42 But basically, I wanna build this like a,
08:45 I wouldn't call it a rat rod,
08:46 but a car that you gotta use your hands.
08:48 You can't buy billet.
08:49 You have to just buy the, get the parts,
08:52 or go to junkyards.
08:53 I've already started going back to junkyards
08:54 and getting parts for it.
08:55 Elwood's Garage came because,
09:04 when I sign my artwork,
09:06 if you ever see my artwork anywhere,
09:07 it's always signed Elwood, Larry Wood, Elwood.
09:10 And I've always had nicknames all my life.
09:12 And when it came time to put a sign up down here,
09:16 Elwood was a shorter.
09:18 It fits, and it works great on graphics and everything.
09:21 So that's kind of where the Elwood's Garage came from.
09:23 Through the years, I've gotten, as I've gone along,
09:26 you know, got to do the Hot Wheels,
09:28 got to do the real cars, got my garage.
09:31 I've gotten, I've been lucky.
09:32 I've been, things have really worked out
09:35 pretty good for me.
09:35 In fact, Mattel once had a brainstorm session,
09:39 and we were supposed to do a chart
09:41 of how our life went on and off, on and off.
09:43 You know, things we did and everything.
09:45 And I said, "Buying is easy."
09:46 15 years old, I found cars, I went here,
09:49 and I'm happy ever since.
09:51 (gentle guitar music)
09:54 (gentle guitar music continues)
09:58 (gentle guitar music continues)
10:02 (gentle guitar music continues)
10:07 (gentle guitar music continues)
10:11 (gentle guitar music continues)
10:15 (gentle music)
10:18 (upbeat music)