California Hot Wheels designer to be inducted into Automotive Hall of Fame

It started with 16 model cars in 1968 — and from there, an iconic toy brand was born.

That brand, of course, is Hot Wheels, the tiny Mattel cars that became one of the most popular toys in the country.

And Redondo Beach’s Larry Wood is part of that legacy.

Wood, now 81 years old, worked as a Mattel designer for decades, beginning in 1969. His first Hot Wheels designs hit the market in 1970, and he continued working at Mattel, which is based in El Segundo, until he retired in 2019.

Wood is well-known among Hot Wheels collectors — and later this week, he will be inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in Detroit. The ceremony is Thursday, June 20.

“I don’t know where that came from,” the Redondo resident said in a recent interview at his Long Beach garage, where he works daily on his vintage cars, surrounded by Hot Wheels memorabilia. “But all I can figure is I made so many guys play with them through the years and some of them became car guys.”

Wood could not put a number on how many Hot Wheels he designed over the years. But the first one Mattel produced for the market was called “Tri-Baby,” which he described as a “real low sports car with a big scoop on a roof in the top lifted up, and it had turbine engines in the back.”

Wood would go on to design myriad Hot Wheels cars, including “Purple Passion,” “Bone Shaker” and “Stagefright” — all of which are familiar to enthusiasts. He was also responsible for designing packaging, tracks and more.

From 1970 to 1990, through ups and downs at the company, Wood worked mainly by himself, designing Hot Wheels that would entertain youth and adults around the world.

Mattel was a “fantastic place to work,” Wood said, and the “products were always fun.” But the road to Mattel was a winding one — beginning in a small Connecticut town and ending in a celebrated, now Hall of Fame five-decade career.

Wood said he has been a “hot rodder” since he was a teen.

But that wasn’t always the case growing up.

He was into cowboys as a kid, watching “Howdy Doody” on television in the small town of Haddam. But that was until his father, who drove a 1957 Chevy station wagon, brought home a hot rod magazine when he was about 14 years old.

It “opened my eyes to the cool cars that were out there,” Wood said, “mostly in California.

“The only time I ever saw cool cars were in the summer,” Wood added. “Cars would go to the beach so we’d sit on the side of the road and watch.”

He was soo hooked that he started getting car parts and building hot rods.

Wood got a 1936 Ford and put a Chrysler engine in it, and drove it every day — even running it in drag races.

“It was a pure hot rod,” Wood said of his Ford, adding that he believes it was one of the few in Connecticut at the time.

One of Wood’s first jobs was at Pratt & Whitney, an East Hartford, Connecticut, company that opened in 1925 and is known for making jet engines. But that gig didn’t last long.

“One day, I turned around and the guy next to me was 30 years old and I was 18,” Wood said. “And I said, ‘I don’t want to do the same job forever.’ I saw an article in the car magazine about how to draw cars and it was a school in California.”

Wood kept thinking about California, he said — and how he had to go there some day.

Wood’s chance came in 1962.

He enrolled at ArtCenter College of Design, in Pasadena, with his parents’ support. He graduated in 1965, but it wasn’t easy, Wood said.

“There were 50 (students) on the first day,” Wood said, “and there were six that graduated at the end.”

After graduating, Wood didn’t stay long on the West Coast.

He got a job at Ford in Detroit, but was only designing small things like automobile grilles, he said, so “it was kind of boring.”

“However, it was the ’60s, so there was plenty of parties and things going on and I had a great time,” Wood said. “But it snowed on me and I couldn’t drive my hot rods and it just tore me up.”

Wood soon returned to California and got a job at Lockheed in Burbank, where he worked on jet plane interiors.

Then one day, Wood was invited to a party in the South Bay, hosted by friend Howard Rees, who he knew through Ford.

“I walked into his house and his kids were playing with these little cars on this orange loop track,” Wood said. “I said, ‘What are those? And he said, ‘Those are Hot Wheels.’”

Rees had a job as a Hot Wheels designer but was not completely happy. Reese wanted to work on the company’s Major Matt Mason action figure line.

Since there was a potential job opening, Wood went to Mattel and interviewed .

“After years of doing just door handles and grilles, the first day I walked in, they gave me a job to design a whole car and a week to design a whole car,” Wood said. “Wow, that was what I was looking for.”

Some of the early years were challenging, sales-wise, Wood said. But then the tampo printing process came around in 1964, which allowed Mattel to put graphics on the cars.

“The cars went from being a colored car to a car with graphics on it,” Wood said. “Sales went up quite a bit then.”

But “Barbie was the queen,” Wood said. “She was paying all the bills.

“Barbie was the number one selling toy forever and 80% of the people at Mattel were women,” Wood added. “So I was just back in the corner doing my little Hot Wheels thing and sales were just putting along pretty good until they all of a sudden started to go up.”

Then about 20 years in, Wood said, things changed.

“The kids that played with Hot Wheels had their own kids,” Wood said. “So all of a sudden, they started buying more Hot Wheels, and they started buying Hot Wheels for themselves.”

That’s why around the late 1980s, Wood said, Hot Wheels became collectibles.

Mattel began producing the tiney cars for collectors. One of those was the “Purple Passion,” a customized 1949 Mercury that came out in 1990.

“It sold like crazy,” Wood said.

Wood also worked on some Mattel tie-ins, including with the “queen.”

In 1986, for example, Wood designed a 21-inch long Ferrari and a Corvette for Barbie.

“Barbie’s feet hit the headlights,” Wood said, “so it was tough to get the car the right proportions.”