In the driver's seat: Larry Wood's love for cars has kept him designing Hot Wheels for 35 years. (People).

IF you've purchased a Hot Wheels car in the 3 past 35 years, chances are Larry Wood designed it.

Wood has sat at the helm of Mattel Inc.'s toy car division flea rly from its inception, designing miniatures that have appeared in three generations of toy chests. His extra touches -embellishments like flames painted on the front end - have influenced today's car designers.

Wood started with real cars. After a short stint with Ford Motor Co. in the early 1960s, Wood was desperate to return to Los Angeles, where he went to school for automotive design. To get back, he traded car designs for work in the booming aerospace industry.

But a fellow Ford designer, who had left Detroit to launch the Hot Wheels division for LA.-based Mattel Inc., quickly recruited him to join the toy giant in 1969.

Since then, Wood has grown the design division from a one-man operation to oversee a staff of 35. More than S million toy cars are produced a month. The number of unique cars being designed each year has grown from 6 in 1966 to more than 100 this year.

At 61, Wood is nearing retirement, and though he says he can't imagine doing anything else, eventually he would like to focus more time on restoring his collection of classic automobiles.

Question: What's your first car memory?

Answer: My mom tells me my first word was car. I can remember being a little kid and identifying the cars. In the 1950s that was pretty easy because they were all so unique. I was in a little town in Connecticut, and we didn't see many new cars. So I would go out on top of a hill with a buddy in the summers and watch all the cars go by on Route 9 on their way to the beach.

Q: When did you start thinking about making a career out of designing cars?

A: I really got interested in cars when I was close to getting my driver's license. My dad was a football coach, and one day he found one of his players reading a car magazine during practice and took it away. He brought it home and made the mistake of giving it to me. That did it. I read those magazines all the time. They were all about these guys in California building hot rods. Before that, I didn't know people did that. I just assumed cars came from a factory, you bought it at a car lot and that was it. Those magazines really opened up my eyes.

Q: What was your first car?

A: A 1929 Model A Sedan. My parents didn't know I owned it. It didn't have a top on it and it would fill with snow. It didn't have a battery, so I had to crank start it. I parked it in an apple orchard to hide it from my parents. After school got out I would run straight to the apple orchard, shovel the snow out and crank it up and putter about the orchard's hills. One day the guy who owned the orchard saw me and he made me tell my parents about it. When I did, my parents gave me hell and made me sell it.

Q: What do you drive now?

A: For everyday use I have a Dodge pickup truck, but it's lowered with 18-inch wheels and it's all tricked out. But that's just for transportation. I have five or six classic cars that I work on and restore.

Q: What's your favorite?

A: A 1932 Nash. I found it in 1970 sitting in a field in Texas and dragged it across the country and I've restored it twice since then. It's like a Duesenberg, it's huge. But it's all modernized now under the hood. It's got a Corvette engine and air conditioning and all of that. I've also restored two 1934 Fords, a 1914 Harley and a 1938 Ford truck. Right now I'm working on a 1951 trailer, a 50-foot one that I'm going to haul behind the truck.

Q: How do your real-life car experiences influence your work?

A: There isn't a weekend that goes by that I don't do a car thing. It's a disease really. On my weekends I do all this stuff that eventually comes back to what I do here. I would say easily 80 percent of the Hot Wheels are cars I would like to have.

Q: Are you restricted on what cars you are allowed to design?

A: I've always had these marketing people who supposedly know what people want. During the gas crisis we had to do gas crisis cars. I had to do a Pinto and a Chevy Monza. Fortunately, that only lasted a few years. At least we were able to put flames on them and souped them up a bit.

Q: Do you think any of your designs have influenced Detroit?

A: We think so. Just recently somebody said of the new Mustang that's coming out that all the designers at Ford actually had one of our cars called the Pony-Up on their desks. It probably didn't make them design it that way, but they probably thought if Hot Wheels can do this then we can design it this way.

Q: Do car companies contribute to the designs?

A: We talk to the factory and they will send us the computer files on the body shape. The computer guys here will shrink it down to the size we want. We still have to design the inside. We have to do the chassis, the tires, the wheels, all that stuff. In the old days, you had to draw the car from three views, get the proportions all correct and then have a model maker make a model of it. Were we accurate enough to make it look good but we were never perfect Now we're right on.

Q: How long does the process take?

A: Anywhere from a couple weeks, if we can get the files, to a couple of months if we have to make a model. My rule of thumb is that it takes one year from when you have an idea to when it hits the shelf.

Q: In recent years, collectors have taken up Hot Wheels.

A: You have to go to a convention to really understand it. When 3,000 people show up, that really gives you an idea of how closely people follow what you do. That doesn't even take into account the 100,000 people that can't afford to take a week off to come out to California and spend all that money on a ritzy hotel.

Q: Do you consider yourself a collector?

A: I try to get one of everything I do. I have what's unofficially considered the Hot Wheels museum down in my garage where I keep all my cars. It's the type of stuff I would collect anyway. I put the newest stuff on display for people who stop by. And then on the weekends when I'm working on my cars guys stop by to have a beer and talk cars.

Q: What do you consider your greatest achievement?

A: Probably just surviving. This is a tough business. They are always looking for creative people, and the economy comes and goes. Not a lot of people have been here 35 years. Not a lot of people would want to be here that long, but it works great for me.

Q: Do you have a favorite Hot Wheels car?

A: The collectors really like the Purple Passion. It's been done hundreds of different ways and some collectors, that's all they collect. I guess that's my favorite. It was kind of a breakthrough because I finally got to do a car that I don't consider a toy car. Up until that point the wheels on the cars stuck out so they could roll straight. The Purple Passion was the first where I pulled the wheels in. It made it not work well on a track, but that's when the collectors came in, because it looked like a real car and had all the right proportions.

Q: If you weren't designing Hot Wheels, what else would you be doing?

A: Probably building hot rods for people. I'd like to do that but I'm not fast at it and you have to be. I'm fast at this. I can come up with the designs and drawings here and do everything.

Q: How do you feel about retirement?

A: I don't know. I have expensive hobbies, plus I like coming in to work. This is a great job. It would be hard to be retired. Ideally, I'd like to retire part time and work part time. Before I do that though, I would like to finish restoring the trailer.

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Larry Wood

Title: Chief Designer, Hot Wheels Design

Organization: Mattel Inc.

Born: March 5, 1942

Education: Bachelor's degree in automotive design from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena

Career Turning Point: Leaving Ford for a job that led back to Los Angeles

Most Admired People: General Motors designers Harley Earl and Chuck Jordan, Henry Ford and Edsel Bryant Ford 

Hobbies: Restoring cars

Personal: Married, two children